Really need a way to lock triangle swaps so they stick if a surface regen is needed (like ACAD does). Nothing more aggravating then spending an hour swapping triangles then coming across something that needs to be modified that will require a surface regen knowing all your swaps will be lost. This isn’t too much of a problem when doing a surface from a design plan, but is a issue when you have a couple 1000 asbuilt shots and your calculating pay quantities. (and need it yesterday!)
I just use breaklines to do this - that permanently adjusts the triangles and is no more work really and in reality that is all flipping triangles is doing - adjusting triangles to fit a slope better in the absence of breaklines.
Agreed under most situations.
However, if your sampling distance is set at a short distance for other reasons breaklines make a mess of the surface and cause more work and triangles then you could want. I’m learning the real hard way that having both design work and asbuilt work in the same TBC file is a big mistake mostly because of the sampling distance. While changing the over ride segment length would also do the trick, it’s not real productive when there are multiple little triangle controlling breaklines would be needed. Being able to lock up the triangles would have made this far less of an issue in this instance.
Also, it’s pretty simple to test a triangle flip for the desired results compared to drawing a breakline then deleting it if you don’t end up with a better result. Locking already flipped triangles would be much more productive for the user.
It’s seems that a line entry method/option is needed that will allow quick entry of triangle flipping 3d breaklines, with 0’ sampling distance (regardless of what is set in the surface calc settings) that doesn’t require resetting the linestrings property to override the segment length for the sometimes multitude of triangle flipping breakline entries, in lieu of locking flipped triangles.
Maybe consider a replacement command for the breakline command that has a sticky option to override the segment length for the line being entered. Or maybe modify the _Quick Line command to option allow the picking up a snapped elevation when desired, automatically include in a designated surface, and apply “X” segment length override. This will allow the quick entry of multiple triangle flipping breaklines without causing the addition of multiple additional triangles because of the sampling distance.
I was thinking the same thing Richard.
I am going to add entry by station and offset to quick line as well as the ability to set how many nodes per line you want to create so if youbhave a lot of 2 point or 3 point lines to create you can set it to 2 or 3 etc and it will pick point 1, pick point 2, new line automatically to make that faster also to save having to click New all the time - what do you think?
Alan
I really think that user flipped triangles should be tagged in the data base and the user should be given the option to lock them prior to a surface rebuild. Anything short of that is… well… (insert your favorite adjective here)
Anyway, sans the above, seems your approach would be most helpful if we’re forced to use linework to control triangle flips. For surface control, the ability to also automatically include in a surface and defining of the sampling is also needed I would think. As is typical, 0’ should equal sampling/triangle connections at horiz and vert nodes only.
To me, compared to simply flipping the triangle and having it stick, right click NEW is not nearly the time waster that drawing in a line just to control a triangle is. But anything that reduces the amount of steps is welcome. No step is the best step!
So the question remains, is the design of the surface routines such that providing the ability to lock user flipped triangles is just not possible at all, or is this another one of those “the juice is not worth the squeeze” scenarios for Trimble?
Similar issue: when trimming a surface edge it would be great to have that work locked until the command is closed. It really sucks to go all around a surface getting it trimmed up nicely only to discover some change that needs to be made and undo all your trimming when it regens.
Yes, yes, yes. I’ve cursed more then once in this situation.