surface from 3d polylines

[rmk]

I have a drawing that has only 3d polylines in it. A lot of them. it represents about 1 mile of roadway and ditches.
they were created from lidar as a dtm dwg. I created a surface name, went to definitions and tried adding them as
breaklines but nothing happened. I also tried bringing them in as contours, same thing, nothing.
Do i have to convert all of them into features and add them to the surface?

Thanks

edit: it was my mistake. the layers associated with the surface were turned off. the file did not have my style
and i didn't check the layers......