Trimble Business Center

I am using the Macros offset surface command.  It appears to work well when I have a single clipping boundary and use it in the command on creation.When I then try to add several surface boundaries (Undefined elevation), the surface changes drastically.

I am using TBC 5.1.  I tried installing the Trimble macros SDK file and that didn't seem to help.

Currently you can only select one Clipping Boundary in the Offset Surface Macro, however you should be able to add multiple Clipping Boundaries using the Add / remove Surface Boundaries function (note Not Add / Remove Surface members) to the Offset Surface once it has been created

Let me know if that does what you want.

Alan

The add surface boundary function allows me to add more boundaries.  However, the surface distorts (3rd picture).  My boundaries are undefined elevation.  I also tried using the same clipping boundary to then add surface boundary and that distorted the surface also.  I cant undo the distortion in any way.  I have to rebuild the surface.

Beth

I checked this out yesterday - sorry for not getting back to you same day. 

1) When you run the Offset Surface command and select a single Clipping Boundary, the boundary breaks the triangles around the boundary to create new nodes and then triangulates what was 100% inside the boundary with the additional nodes around the boundary. You can only assign one boundary in the offset Surface command - so that should be as large as you want any parts of it to be later (Step 2)

2) Once you have the offset surface you can assign boundaries to it and use the Add Remove Surface Boundaries to add them to the surface. This puts a filter on the surface and it works as follows

a) The outermost boundary will create an Island from the surface - i.e. data outside it will be hidden.

b) The next boundary inside the outer boundary creates a Hole in the Island - i.e. it hides the data inside it

c) The next boundary inside the hole will form another island

d) The next boundary inside the island will be another hole and so on.

3) So if you want 3 islands only - don't have an outer boundary - just create 3 boundaries around the 3 islands

4) If you want the whole surface but with 3 holes around certain areas then create an outer boundary and add 3 Hole boundaries

This does not corrupt the surface - it is just cropping or hiding the surface triangles from the model so that they don't compute volumes, don't show up in Plan, 3D, Surface Slicer, Section or Profile Views and are not contoured etc. They also will be excluded from Cut Fill Maps etc.

Note: Boundaries applied to a single surface should not overlap, that can cause unexpected behavior / results as it adds ambiguity to the model. So if you are tracking the same lines with different boundaries, be sure that they don't criss cross each other. Note also if your boundary has Arcs in the line, that the arcs will be effectively chorded to create the TIN Models - also if an arc and a lie segment intersect to form a boundary line, it is best to "Break" the arc at the intersect location so that both line and arc get triangulated in the same exact place (chording by breakline approximation parameters for surfaces)

Hope this explains what is happening, if you feel that this is not what is happening to your model, please share the model with me (alan_sharp@trimble.com) and I can take a look for you to see what is happening.

I think that was the long explanation I needed for use of complex boundaries. Thanks much!!

Beth