Introduction
In order for PVcase to successfully evaluate terrain data, it has to work with clearly distinguished objects that indicate topographical height information.
Some of the topographical surveys have many different indicators clustered together on the same layer, which can cause errors in terrain recognition.
Before generating a layout, it is best to create a Terrain mesh:
- Select the topography data in the Layout generation settings.
- Open the Terrain mesh menu.
- Adjust all necessary parameters.
- Generate a Terrain mesh.
To investigate the mesh and PVcase's estimation of the terrain, go to the Isometric view in AutoCAD.
To learn more about the terrain mesh functionalities, visit Terrain mesh.
Height measurement topography
Let’s see an example terrain survey with some issues. As you can see in the example below, once the mesh is generated, some steep and unrealistic undulations are indicated and must be regarded as false.
Viewing the area in a 3D isometric perspective allows for the identification of such extreme variations and the issues that might be causing them.
Below you can see some of these issues and how to solve them.
Issues and suggested solutions
Issue: A comma, instead of a dot, is used as a decimal separator in some height measurements.
Solution: Manually adjust the values or use the FIND command to change the decimal comma into a dot.
Issue: Tree height measurements are on the same layer as terrain height measurements. (see image below).
Solution: Manually change the layer of tree height measurements.
Issue: Other topographical or documentation indications are on the same layer as terrain height measurements (see image below).
Solution: Manually transfer the indicative numbers to another layer.
After these issues are resolved, do not forget to Reselect terrain data, and then you may generate the Terrain mesh again and evaluate the results.
Contour line topography
Another frequent problem with contour line topographical surveys is the absence of elevation (Z-vertex) data for the contour lines. This issue often results in rendering significant portions of the topography unusable.
If the Terrain mesh shows extreme deviations or even the selection of topography cannot be done, then contour lines need to be fixed. This pop-up message will appear when selecting our contour lines, in case that all of them have 0 elevation:
If only some of them are faulty, you will be asked if we want to keep them or not:
Possible solutions
One option is to simply click Exclude, to ignore this false and unrealistic information.
However, a more effective approach is to address the root cause of the problem by identifying these contour lines. This can be achieved by using a 3D Isometric view to isolate and rotate the topography. In most cases, this process will visually expose the faulty contour lines.
Simply placing these polylines on another layer or giving elevation data to it will fix the issue.
For more information on what types of terrain surveys are currently compatible with the software, visit the article Topography compatibility.