The Save Design Surface button provides a quick means to save the triangulation mesh file of the GeoFluv™ draft design surface. The draft design surface is virtual and is not necessarily represented in the drawing at the moment. The draft design surface is created using the inputs of the 2D valley bottom polylines, the GeoFluv Boundary, the Pre-Disturbed Surface, and the various settings of the current GeoFluv project. The draft design surface is the same one that would be created by the Draw Design Surface button.
Any modifications to ridge or subridge or channel polylines in the drawing using tools such as Edit Longitudinal Profile are not a part of the draft design surface. To create a triangulation mesh file of the design surface in the drawing, use the Draw GeoFluv Contours command in the Natural Regrade dropdown menu and select the Write Triangulation File option on the Triangulate tab.
The user left-clicks on the Save Design Surface button and the Save Design Surface - (.FLT; .TIN) dialog box appears on the screen. The user is offered three options to name and save the surface file. The user can type in the name of a new or existing file in the File Name window, or left-click on the Browse button to the right of the window to get a list of surface files related to the project. If the user wants to save surface file as an existing file (overwrite the file), they can highlight the file name in the Recently Used Files: window at the bottom of the dialog box or in the "Files in that folder" window at the right of the dialog box. The user then left-clicks on the Open button at the bottom of the dialog box to save the file with the selected name.