CompuServe Messages

Hi Steve, ->>" >> The Displace ipas was not an option in this case, << ->"Why?" An architectural grading plan (or contour plan) is generally just a bunch of curvy lines with elevations labeled for each line. In this case the hardcopy of the grading plan was combined with the sewer and road plans. And the original acad drawing had the grading plan layer isolated, but had copious text labels embedded into each line. This particular plan had about 500 different grading lines drawn on it. I did try converting the acad file to dxf, importing via illustrator into photoshop, stripping out the text labels and creating a grayscale map suitable for a displace operation. However, it was pretty much impossible to paint smooth transitions between all the countour lines so that the gray shades would be correctly interpreted to represent the correct elevation. Since my landscape had Z extents between 18' and 70' over about a 1/2 square mile area, the gray shading between elvations would have been very slight. In the end, and considering the number of objects I had to place onto the landscape (including lots of contour-aligned fences), I decided to go the other route. I'm sure someone with more displace experience could've done this using displace, but it just looked like a longer, less accurate road. However, I do use displace for lots of other things. <g> -Heinz.