LinceCAD CONTOUR — Contours
Generates the contour lines of a terrain or surface.
- Command:
CONTOUR· Global name:_CONTOUR· Alias:CN,ISOLINES - Ribbon: Topography › Terrain
Generates the contour lines of a terrain or surface at a given interval, with index contours every N on their own layer, optional smoothing and elevation labels aligned with the contour, which is broken where the text goes.
Usage
- Enter CONTOUR (CURVASNIVEL) or click Contours.
Select the terrain points (points, blocks or a surface):
- Select the terrain points or a surface (SURFACE) and press Enter. The Contours dialog opens; you can also go on at the command line.
Contour interval <…>:
- Give the contour interval (elevation step between minor contours).
Index contour every (0 for none) <…>:
- Give how often a contour is an index contour (0 for none).
Smoothing [None/Polyline/Spline] <…>:
- Choose the smoothing: None (contours follow the triangles), Polyline (polyline with more vertices) or Spline (fit spline).
Distance between index contour labels (0 no labels) <…>:
- Give the distance between labels on index contours (0 no labels). The contours are drawn.
Notes
- Contours are polylines (or splines) at their elevation: minor ones on layer
CN_FINA, index ones onCN_MAESTRA, with their labels. - The algorithm interpolates where each level crosses the triangle edges and chains the segments; contours around a peak close on themselves.
- Breaklines: if the surface has breaklines, the contours fold along them, also when smoothed.
- Smoothing never crosses neighbouring contours: instead of smoothing each contour on its own, the surface is refined (each triangle split into 16 with elevations that follow the slopes) and all contours come from that one surface. Next to breaklines the surface stays planar.
- Labels are spread evenly along the contour and always read from left to right. The contour is broken (not masked), so it looks the same in any program. To label by hand, CONTOURLABEL.
- The dialog also sets the label text height.