Spatial Manager Terrain Assistant, available in the CAD versions (AutoCAD, BricsCAD and ZWCAD), provides the user with intuitive tools for processing 2D/3D Terrain information (Points, Contours, and Digital Terrain Models). In this blog entry we review the possibilities that the application brings to the generation of Contours starting from different data types and applying different options for created objects
Related videos: AutoCAD / BricsCAD / ZWCAD
Whether from 3D or 2D information in the drawing, or even a simple location of an area, Spatial Manager will allow you to produce 2D or 3D Contours, opting by multiple settings in terms of density, styles, labeling, attachment to data tables, etc. In the following image you can see the Contours options window
Creating Contours options (Spatial Manager Terrain Wizard)
In the above videos you can analyze four different scenarios on how to apply these tools:
- I have a Terrain
- Where we will start from digital terrain models (Meshes, Polyfaces, TIN, etc.) in order to produce 3D contours located in their elevations and themed by colors according to these elevations
- A nice 3D Point cloud
- Where we will select 3D points in the drawing and create 2D contours differentiating by color the minor and major contours
- Only 2D Points? Don’t worry
- Where an online elevation service will be automatically accessed to download the altitudes of a set of selected 2D points in the drawing XY plane. In this sample, we will label the major curves
- No data at all? Don’t panic
- Even harder. With no data in the drawing and based only on its location, a user-defined grid of points can be generated and the elevations of the grid points will be downloaded from an online elevation service. In order to see some more options, in this exercise the contours are automatically attached to a data table in the drawing that includes two fields: contour altitudes and categories
Enjoy the videos
Learn more about configure and create Terrains, Contours, 3D Points, etc. in the ‘Spatial Manager’ technical Wiki:
Note: Terrain functionalities can be found in the Professional edition only
