Simplifying Contours (for export to 3DS MAX)

[nkennelly]

We do alot of work with terrain contours. I have a layout for the area around an airport we are doing some design work at and I want to take the contours into 3DS MAX to do a terrain and 3D design/animation of our work. In AutoCAD, is there a way to "shrink" the contours polyline vertexes? We imported the info into AutoCAD from Terramodel and all the polylines making up the contours have a huge number of vertexes. So when I take this info into MAX is makes it a huge file to work with. I'd like to simplify it so I am not having to work with such an intense file.

If this makes ANY sense, I'd appreciate any tips.

Thanks
Nick

[jaberwok]

This may help.

[nkennelly]

I am very bad at LISP and using them. (please don't shoot me... just never used them much).

But I did load this LISP routine and ran it, but my file is still the same size. When I ran this routine, it came up, said select opbjects (I did), and then it went right back to the command line. So it didn't do anything. I followed the instructions to a T.

[jaberwok]

Sorry about that.
Did you try the link to the similar routine for Lwpolylines? It's commented in Spanish, unfortunately.

Have you tried the AutoLisp forum?
One of the regulars over there has produced a similar routine (pfilter.lsp) but the latest version that I've found was older than the one I linked to. Written for R12 if I remember correctly.

[de-co1]

I have had a similar problem before (not using Terramodel though) where there are too many vertices in my contours to allow me to work with the terrain efficiently in MAX.

It's a lengthy process, but can be simplified to a very large degree depending on the detail you require in your MAX model... I would normally just draw a polyline over the most complicated contour line (using as few straight lines as possible), offset this, and using grips, edit each consecutive polyline to match up with the rest of the contours.

Import into MAX, create your terrain, and apply a smooth modifier...!

It is crude, and by no means the most effective, but it does the job.

[nkennelly]

Thanks. I will try that. The optimize modifier in MAX worked pretty well too.