I think a particularly useful tool would allow the user to take a line that crosses a surface, and give a best fit vertical alignment based on parameters the user inputs.
again, I agree with this. I do a lot of variable depth overlays when the profile is not given in the plan but is determined based on field survey. I drape the alignment on the existing surface then open in profile viewer with about 20x vertical exaggeration and begin fudging in a vertical alignment. Something that does a best fit would be nice, but to be fair to the programmers I can’t think of method in my small mind of making that work, but maybe they could pull it off.
I agree that I have no clue either, but I have definitely run into needing this.
Not sure if this ability already exists but, if you’re using pointclouds to generate the surface, what I think would be even slicker is if we could drape a line on the pointcloud itself and not the surface sampled from the pointcloud. Then do a bestfit from there. Unless that ability already exists and I’ve yet to discover it.
one of the things that i do / have looked at is to draw a boundary around the line that is narrow - maybe .2’ left and right of the line - use it to extract a point cloud region - look at how many points are in the region and then crank the number of points in a surface from a point cloud up to that number and then make a surface from it- then use the change elevation command to drape the line on the surface - that does what you are suggesting and could be totally automated for profiles and sections
The best fit line command does some of what you want but can go high or low to the measured surface / line - what people seem to want though is to go mostly low
Alan
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