Civil 3D 2015 surface question

Yes,
1 Create new surface
2 Open the 'Definition' drop down menu
3 Right-click on 'Edits'
4 Paste Surface

Hope this helps.

I am assuming you want to join one more detailed topo onto a less detailed one.

The answer is yes, by using the "Paste Surface":

-Create a new surface
-go to that surface in prospector, then definition, then edits
-click paste surface
-select the first surface.
-repeat for the second.

This surface edit will paste in the detailed one on top of the less detailed one. The great thing about doing it this way is the original surfaces are untouched in the prospector, so if you screw it up you can just delete the new surface.

The order is important because the underlying area of the the first surface will be erased after the second paste.

Hope this helps!

Thanks to both of you. I'll give this a shot right now.

The surfaces I'm trying to combine are actually side by side. We had a whole town flown but only needed mapping for a certain area. Later on we took on another project and needed an adjacent area mapped. Both files are from the same flight and fit together perfectly (hopefully the xml and tin file will too). For some reason they gave us a land xml file for the first mapping and a tin file for the additional mapping.

Gregg

It should work.

That said if I were you I would request the data in the form you like better. Especially if it is the same contractor that did the flights.

> -Create a new surface
> -go to that surface in prospector, then definition, then edits
> -click paste surface
> -select the first surface.
> -repeat for the second.
That will work, but I think I'd do it this way:
- Import the xml surface
- insert the TIN lines to the drawing.
- Modify-Surface-Add Data and select the TIN lines as breaklines

It did work.

Norman, why your way? One advantage might be the fact that you still need to keep both surfaces in the drawing when you use the edit/paste surface method. At least that's how it looks to me (I tried to delete the pasted surface after and I lost that portion of the combined surface).

I don't really mind having 2 surfaces in the drawing as long as I have one surface for the entire area but it might be a little confusing to others.

Exactly. By using the TIN lines from the XML file, instead of the XML file itself, the "connection" to the XML file is not necessary, and we end up having less overhead in the drawing.

It's OK to keep multiple surfaces in a drawing, too. For sake of making things less confusing, you can set the one you don't need to a style that is a "no display" style.

If I set the surface that is pasted into the combined surface to no display, it wont display in the combined surface either. I did try that.

If you really want to get rid of the two original surfaces and just keep the final one then you can do that. Select the surface in the Prospector, right-click and use the Create Snapshot option. The surface will become static at the current state, and any future rebuilds will start from the snapshot.

For more information see this link.