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 TBC Polygon (Area) Export to GIS Format Bug

Zach Edwards's profile image
Zach Edwards posted 12-21-2022 11:19

Hey Guys,

Can you look into the TBC Export for polygons? When I export a polygon from TBC to shapefile or GDB, it creates a polyline shapefile or polyline feature class, respectively. We have tested this both in TBC version 5.70 and version 5.81. What I am doing is creating a polygon (using the Create Boundary command) from a polyline. Then I need to export to shapefile/GDB as a polygon geometry type but it ends up being a line. Obviously, we can convert from polyline to polygon with ESRI but several of our customers and colleagues do not have ESRI to perform this conversion for their clients. Thanks and please advise. 




Brendon Edge's profile image
Brendon Edge
Hi Zach,

In TBC a Boundary is created as a Polyline - so that's why it exports that way. It's a bit confusing admittedly as the Command tool suggests you are creating a Polygon (but really it just closes the Polyline), so it isn't really a Polygon at the Feature level. Providing an elevation is an option for a Boundary too. Whereas it's required when creating a Polygon using the Create Polygon option in the CAD/Linestring/Polygon tool.


The purpose of the Boundary in TBC isn't really for GIS data creation:

Use the Create Boundary command to:

  • Create a 2D boundary to delineate a portion of a surface. This is useful if you do not want to send an entire surface to field device firmware; it enables you to include a smaller surface model with your design data. The boundary clips the surface to include only the surface triangles encompassed or crossed by the boundary.
  • Identify the extents of a job site/project or specific sections within it.

The Create Polygon tool is all that I can see that will give you what you need (creating a Polygon that you can then export to GIS as a Polygon feature), and you could use a Feature Definition (FXL) if needed. Hopefully that helps. 

Here you'll see that the Boundary I created from a CAD Polyline is still just a Polyline. But below it I created a Polygon using the Create Polygon Command.