Select the draped line, right click and view the Properties. Converts a 2D line to 3D by referencing an elevation as it crosses a TIN edge.Īnother advantage of the resulting draped line is that it can be offset in 2D and 3D. The normal attributes for what will become a 3D linestring. This is one of those commands in Trimble Business Center that can have additional benefit after the initial command is executed. Sharp and texture boundary is for material sections. Soft for grading areas and sharp for curbs and walls. Sharpness lets you control how the line is used. They can be placed on a separate layer. They can be on a selected layer and also turn up named in section views. The breakline command does several things. Experiment with toggling an item off in plan and 3D view.Īny breakline is no more than a linestring that is part of a surface. The visualization settings will help to identify specifics during the data prep process. Set rebuild method to “By User” when working with large surfaces so it will not recompute with each change. These default settings are usually fine.Īdjust flat triangles and tolerance to help reduce flat triangles on the surface generated from imported contours. Use it whenever possible.Įdge settings – I will sometimes reduce these to close off errant triangles outside my desired surface before making an edge breakline. Horizontal alignment – A quick plan-based road (not a true corridor) greatly benefits from an alignment-based surface. The control available in the Properties of a surface is one of them.Ĭolor – Try and set consistent colors for different surface types. Trimble Business Center has a lot of features that seem to lurk in plain sight. I want to go over some surface related commands in Trimble Business Center that are either misunderstood or have more depth than meets the eye. There are options to adjust the triangles in a surface but I feel it is better to make your screen work reflect the desired outcome. By using various commands and changing the screen elements that make up a surface, we can make it work better for our purposes. TRIMBLE BUSINESS CENTER TRAINING VIDEOS SOFTWARE
The TIN produced is the representation of points, 2D, and 3D lines produced in the software during data prep. A surface like this consists of flat triangles, often times thousands of them. We work with a TIN (Triangulated Irregular Network) also called a DTM (Digital Terrain Model). I will do an article on that particular subject in the future. If both are present, you can have them separated to make customizing the surface easier. Try CAD Points and Lines if you want to break out surface elements. You have several options should you decide to do so: I usually don’t expand the explode options. In the import command option, there are several options.
If you are not certain of the quality of the surface, check detail areas for accuracy. Check the file header to verify units are correct. You may need to import the surface several different ways to get results you like. I like to track the import options for each type of file. Never use drag and drop for an xml surface. Trimble Business Center has some great import options for xml surfaces. I’ll reinforce some of these ideas with a video to help illustrate these concepts. What this blog post will so is focus on some powerful commands that are time savers and life savers for certain situations. You can find videos on that through Trimble’s website. This offering is not a training on surfaces. Today I want to go over some of the commands in Trimble Business Center and talk about the best places to use them. To complicate things further, as new and enhanced commands come out, users can be confused and frustrated trying to drink from the firehose of improvements. We can do this quicker and more accurately than ever before but I find users get bogged down with what commands to use and when to use them. The software tool, Trimble Business Center, utilizes commands for creating, editing and checking surfaces to help us make data that performs well in the field. Using the wrong tool or trying to put too many in your bag causes problems.