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Virtual Surveyor includes triangulation tools that allow the user to create surface from enabled survey items. The Triangulate All/Within tool creates a surface Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN). 

The Triangulate All button appears in the HOME tab by default. 

If one or several boundaries are selected, this button turns into Triangulate Within and the triangulation extends only within the selected boundary. 

The Triangulate Within button is also available in the Create group of the TOOLS for Boundary tab.

Before using these tools, it is essential to draw and enable the survey items that define the surface topography using points, breaklines, and boundaries. Triangulate All is used when you want to create a surface item TIN over the entire extent of your drone survey. Use Triangulate Within when you want to create a TIN over a specific area surrounded by a boundary.

Overview

• Quick Usage Guide
• Examples of When You can Use the Triangulate All/Within Tool
  • Triangulate Breaklines
  • Triangulate a Surface with a Low-Pass Points Grid
  • Triangulate a Surface from a 2D Map
  • Triangulate a 3D Surface
  • Triangulate a Stockpile Calculation
  • Road Survey with Section Lines
• Tips and Tricks

Quick Usage Guide

1. Make sure all relevant survey Project Items are active.
   1. (Optional) Select the boundary you want to triangulate within.
2. Click on Triangulate All/Within.
3. The surface (TIN) is created.

Examples of When You can Use the Triangulate All/Within Tool

Triangulate Breaklines

Triangulate a surface from breaklines and export the contour lines.

Triangulate a Bare Earth Surface with Q-Points

Use Q-Points to Create a Surface for a Quarry. Q-Points is also a good tool to use on bare earth constructions sites. 

Triangulate a Surface with a Low-Pass Points Grid

Create a surface from a densely vegetated open canopy area with a Low-pass points grid.

Triangulate a Surface from a 2D Map

Create a design surface from a 2D map.

Triangulate a 3D Surface

Create a 3D surface over specific part of the drone survey using Triangulate Within.

Triangulate a Stockpile Calculation

Generate a reference surface for stockpile calculation using Triangulate Within.

Road Survey with Section Lines

Make a road survey with section lines using Triangulate Within.

Tips and Tricks

• The triangulation tool creates a surface from all visible items in the Viewport. 
  • All survey points, line vertices, and boundary vertices are used to set the surface TIN vertices.
• You can select multiple boundaries before launching the process to triangulate multiple areas at the same time. 
  • Press and hold Ctrl while clicking on Project Items to select multiple items in either the Viewport or the Project View. 
• When triangulating a surface for bare earth projects, Virtual Surveyor provides two ways you can optimize the initial surface to better fit the underlying Elevation Terrain. 
  • A fast method to optimize your surface is by using the Auto-Flip Edges tool that automatically flips the edges of the TIN to better fit to the underlying terrain. 
  • For more control over where you optimize your surface, you can also use the Flip Edge tool to manually flip triangle edges individually.
• You can also edit, polish, and refine the surface by adding or removing vertices without having to go back through the entire surface creation.
  • Remove vertices by highlighting the surface and clicking on Edit Surface in the TOOLS tab. Use the Remove Vertex edit mode to quickly remove vertices that fell on buildings, trees, vehicles, etc.
  • Add vertices by using the Edit Surface feature in the TOOLS tab. Change the edit mode to Add Vertex and left-click on the terrain to add new vertices where necessary.