Contours Dialog

The Contours dialog lets you change the way TPC draws contours for a surface.

Major and Minor

The major and minor contour lines have their own settings and are grouped togehter in this dialog.

Draw

Turn on this option to draw the contour lines.

Label

Turn on this option to label the contours. Labels are not drawn if the lines are turned off.

Interval

Set the contour interval. A contour line will be created at each interval (i.e. an interval of 2 creates contours at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc).

Miscellaneous

Elevation Decimals

Specify the number of decimals to use for the contour labels.

Label Interval

Specify the spacing of the contour labels. To increase the space between the labels, increase the interval.

Embed Labels

Turn this option on to create a blank space for the label within the contour line. This slows down the drawing of the contour. When turned off, TPC places the contour label above and next to the contour line instead.

Smoothing

Contour smoothing replaces the sharp angles where a contour line changes direction with smoothed transitions. See Contour Smoothing.

None or Curve Fit

Choose None to turn smoothing off (default). Choose Curve Fit to turn smoothing on.

Max Offset

Specify the maximum amount from which a smoothed polyline segment will vary from its corresponding unsmoothed segment. The default is 5 units.

Tension

TPC uses the tension value you specify to compute the amount of curvature when fitting the polyline. A tension of 1.0 (default is 1.0) guaranties that no smoothed polyline segment will vary by more than the Max Offset from its corresponding unsmoothed segment. A tension of 0.0 turns off smoothing. Tensions between 0.5 and 2 are common.

Max Angle

Specify an interior angle above which no curve fitting will be done. This allows TPC to skip very flat vertices in the polyline.

Save / Reset

Choose Save to save the current settings as the default. Any surfaces you create after this will use these settings. All of the settings except the Description, Source and Border traverses are saved.
Choose Reset to copy the default settings to this surface. The settings in the dialog will change to reflect the default settings but you will need to choose OK to apply them to the current surface.

Editions

Premium, Professional