contour surface button.
This option allows you to choose how height contours are displayed for the survey surface.
On the main toolbar, click the contour surface button.
The contour options apply to the surface which is current selected as the survey. By default, the survey is the first surface
The contour options window is shown:
From this drop down menu you can select the model that you want to apply the contouring to.
Specify the height interval for the contours.
By default the contours will be generated from a zero datum. If you want the first contour to be at a different height then specify the start level.
The first of the following pictures show a survey in plan as loaded from file. The second picture shows the survey with 0.5m contours.
The contours are annotated with their level for visual display purposes. The size of the text annotation can be entered here. The value given is the character height of the font as it will appear, in your working units, on the plan view.
If desired, you can specify a different annotation sizes for the prominent contours.
The purpose of prominent contours is to highlight a greater interval that is a multiple of the normal contours.
If set to have a prominent contour Every 5 contours, every fifth contour will be a prominent contour. With a normal contour of 0.5m the prominent contour will occur every 2.5m.
The contour height annotation is repeated at intervals along each contour. You can specify that interval here. If no annotation is desired, then enter a value of 0 (zero).
You may enter a different annotation interval for the prominent contours.
The colour for the contours (and prominent contours) is shown. You can click the Pick button to select a different colour.
The buttons select various default colour schemes for the normal and prominent contours. The greyscale scheme can be useful for making the contours less dominent on a drawing.
By default survey contours are display using the green/red scheme, and design contours using the blue/red scheme.
Normally contours are generated at height intervals starting from zero height. For example, for a 0.5m interval, contours would occur at 0.0m, 0.5m, 1.0m, 1.5m ... 99.5m, 100.0m, 100.5m etc. However, you can set the Start Level to any height. For example, setting the Start Level to 0.1m (with a height interval of 0.5m) would result in contours at 0.1m, 0.6m 1.1m ... 99.6m, 100.1m, 100.6m etc.
Sometimes you want to generate just a single contour at a particular height. You can do this by setting the Start Level to the desired single contour height, and make the Interval very large, so that the second contour will not occur within the level range of your design.
If the Apply Smoothing box is checked then a smoothing algorithm will be applied to the contour lines.