In Carlson Civil, Surfaces can be written out as external files, but a lot of design and computations involving surfaces can also be accomplished directly within the drawing without writing out external files. Triangulation surfaces can be written out as .tin or .flt and grid surfaces as .grd files. When an external file is generated, a named Surface is also stored in the drawing. This named Surface is accessed through the Surface Manager, where it can be edited.
The main Carlson Civil
command for working with Surfaces is called Triangulate and
Contour. It is a single dialog box with
four tabs, and covers the entire process of specifying the general
settings to generate the Surface, creating Contours, generating
Labels, and specifying the data source(s) for the
Surface.
In Carlson Civil, Contours are generated as regular AutoCAD Polylines. Contours can be generated and automatically labeled simultaneously, or labeled after they are generated. Labels can be generated with wipeouts to hide the contour beneath them, and can also be slid along the contour to easily change their location.
The Triangulation Surface
Manager has tools to edit, add and remove data points and
breaklines and update the triangulation dynamically. It also allows
you to change the display properties for the triangulation,
contours and labels.
The TIN Utilities function
provides a powerful set of editing tools.
