Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Possible to place contour lines to toposurface instead of points?

buttonsrtoys

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Joined: Wed, Feb 10, 2010
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I'm creating my first toposurface from a survey by tracing over its contour lines. Some of my contour lines are fairly straight, so only require a few points to describe. I'm finding Revit dosn't preserve my contour lines. Rather, it preserves the points and creates its own contour lines by interpolating between the points. I'd prefer that it would preserve the contour lines and interpolate between these lines, but suspect this isn't an option in Revit and that if I want a decent representation of my contour lines, then I have to keep my spacing between points along the line down. Is that correct, or is there a way to enter and preserve contour lines in a toposurface?

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teafoe5

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You create contour lines by placing points.  Your contour lines will follow the points created by you. 

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buttonsrtoys

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Right. And the contour lines pass through the points, but Revit takes liberties as to the path taken between the points when creating its contours. Attached is a pic showing what I mean. I created four concentric boxes. Rather than showing the contour lines as boxes, Revit smooths out the surface, which chchanges the contour lines I'd intended.

Of course typically you wouldn't have boxes for contour lines, but I'm finding even in real world situations Revit's interpolation is farther from the contour line than the path I'd entered when specifying the points. So, I'm thinking if you want your revit contours to be an approximation of the surveyed lines, you need to keep your points tight. Is that about right?

It would be nice to have the option to enter splines or even polylines as contour lines and Revit to interpolate between the lines. My question what whether I was missing something and this was possible.

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teafoe5

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No points is the only way to do contours.  The more points closer together the better Revit will read your contours.  If you only have 4 boxes and 4 points per box how is Revit suppose to know what you want?  It is assuming what you want so you need to place more points.  Contour lines are subjet to interpretation by the person that is creating them.  If you and I were both to do a drawing we would both end up with slightly different results.  Revit will give you actual results instead of your interpretation.

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buttonsrtoys

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Tea, understood. To answer your question, "how is Revit suppose to know what I want?", I answered that a couple times in my previous posts. Rather than specifying topography by entering points, I want the option to specify lines and have the surface intepolated between the lines.

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teafoe5

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Add it to Autodesk wish list

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buttonsrtoys

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Will do. Thanks!

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sllana

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Did you try doing those contour lines in autocad and then generating the topo in revit?

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