When I explode my second surface today. I was not able to join some lines nor delete the points without those points deleting the breaklines. I was able to do one explode surface and join all my lines and then delete the rest with no issue. Is there a reason why this is not letting me do this on the second one?
I have come up with a solution for the joining. The max deflection is accounted for in the joining process. Which for me on this is not a good work flow as this surface is a U-Turn surface. This would be were a explode surface of just the node lines comes in instead of all the breaklines and vertices.
When you explode a surface you can create Lines only or points and lines. when you do points and lines the lines are dependent on the points - if the points get deleted then the lines go too. If you edit a point (move it or change its elevation) then the lines that attach to it go with it (this is an advantage). The downside of Lines only is that they are not attached to points so to edit a set of lines that connect at a point - each line has to be edited individually. The upside of having no points is a smaller data set and easy deletion of lines. Depending on what you are doing either can be a benefit, both come with plusses and minuses.
The joining of lines is based on the deflection angle between segments - so if you are going around a curve you need to have a larger deflection angle setting if you want the line elements to join together . You can also use an alignment and Filter by Alignment to make manual selections of linear elements and then join the selected objects together - this also works well in certain situations.
We are trying to make good data out of a bad starting point (A TIN Model), and nothing is going to always be perfect in that situation - these are tools that combine to make a solution, not necessarily a guaranteed result every time - it all depends on the data.
If I missed a key point let me know and I will take a look at it.
Alan
I have been using the Explode Surface and not the Extract Features. if the Extract can do what the Explode does, then why not give the Explode the option to do line or lines and points? The u-turn I am working on, I have to tie into and existing widening. So, I have to widen my existing frontage road and then figure out where to tie my uturn. I need to build my uturn corridor and explode the surface to match up my side slope linework for the widening.
Seems to me that a explode surface with no points would work and then do create points. Possibly even do an Optimize linestring to cut down the segments would clean that work up.
will definitely keep the extract in mind for next time.
