I am modeling a series of complex and detailed urban roadway corridors and intend to assemble the various terrain models generated into various complex terrain models. Because I am modeling this complex roadway project by construction stage, I will essentially be combining the various terrain models like "lego" blocks to capture both permanent and temporary construction by stage. Things are going relatively well. While I have come across numerous software issues, there have been no issues I haven't been able to work around, until now.
My workflow includes modeling a corridor and assigning alternate surfaces for proposed and temporary objects separately. To my surprise, creating an alternate surface does not automatically create a surface boundary. I was able to assign the corridor boundary as a boundary element(automatically generated mesh exterior boundary) to create a dynamic boundary element that will update with changes to my corridor. However, when I go to create a complex terrain model, it does not seem to merge the various boundary elements together, thus few or no traingles are displayed due to a confusing mess of exterior boundaries scattered throughout the complex terrain model.
I can create a complex terrain model that shows all the information I want if I do not assign the alternate surfaces a boundary. This is a non-starter because I get all sorts of unwanted triangulation or loss of data because I have a wide range of triangle sizes in most of my corridors. Furthermore, I am unable to add a boundary element (boundary or drape boundary) to the complex terrain model. I get a "not a valid element type" no matter what type of element I try to add. I have tried both merge and append without success. I think it may be because the elements I am trying to use are too detailed. This is also a problem because I want my boundary to be exact, preventing unwanted triangulation or clipping.
Boundaries are extremely important to be able to portray and verify data. I am very surprised at the wide range of issues I have encountered surrounding boundaries when previous versions of both Inroads and Geopak dealt with them reasonably well and almost entirely automatically.
To summarize, my questions are:
1. Are alternate surfaces intended to be created without an automatically generated boundary? Previous versions of Geopak/Inroads automatically assigned exterior boundaries without issue.
2. Are complex terrain models supposed to be able to rectify multiple boundaries?
3. Is there a specific element type required or maximum number of points on an element that can be assigned to a boundary in a complex terrain model?
4. Do you have any other suggestions for how I might accomplish what I am attempting?
Geopak SS4 08.11.09.872
Microstation SS4 08.11.09.832
Thanks,
Ben