Landscape Error - Terrain Elevation Problem

[WhistlerBuilder]

Hi all,

 

I am having a problem with Chief giving me the error where the terrain elevations are generated ignoring the terrain breaks and retaining walls. It gives the error "The terrain interpolator is ignoring terrain breaks and retaining walls due to complexity of the calculation."

 

I am running into this problem often when I am trying to do complex landscape or site elevation plans. The plan I attached that is throwing the problem is a rather large building with some accurate site grading requirements.

 

I could be missing something simple and just not know it. Anyone who has lots of experience doing accurate landscaping your input would be very welcome.

 

The building is removed because the whole plan vastly exceeds the size limit for the forums. The terrain only version is still throwing the error so I think the error is in my Terrain break configuration. Something I am doing is triggering the errors and I would love to know what it is so I can change my design and avoid this in the future.

 

Thank you in advance,

Cheers!

Landscape_Error.plan

[glennw]

The problem is definitely being caused by the polyline Terrain Breaks on the landscaped mounds adjacent to the road on the bottom of the plan.

Do you really need them there?

And they are so close together - with a large Transition Distance.

What are you trying to achieve by using them?

Terrain breaks are usually used to make a vertical step in a terrain - same as retaining wall (a retaining wall is just a terrain break with a wall).

 

On thinking about this a little more, I think it is just that you are not using the Terrain Break tool correctly.

Either for the correct purpose or technically correct.

As I said, it is designed to build a vertical break or step in the terrain by placing terrain elevation data above and below the break.

It would appear that you really don't want a vertical step in the terrain where you have placed the breaks - although that is just a guess on my part.

 

[WhistlerBuilder]

I am using two breaks where maybe 1 will do. But I found it was not giving a sharp enough transition to represent how the terrain would change elevation in a rip-rap rock stack terrain wall. Chief has no option for this, or none that I know of. The closest thing is terrain retaining wall, and I find those are horrible to work with and always get messed up unless its attached to a foundation wall. Retaining walls also do not have an option to show them as a rock stack wall.

 

I guess I will try more configurations of the terrain breaks to see what works.

[glennw]

The terrain breaks are too close together and don't have the correct elevation data to make them work  as you think they should.

I would forget the terrain breaks altogether and use more elevation lines (and/or greater height differences) to get the steeper slope required.

I think you are wasting your time using terrain breaks

I would also get rid of the elevation points and use Elevation Lines or Elevation Splines.

Elevation lines are really just elevation points at about 2'0" strung together - much easier to control than elevation points.

Just draw then like normal contours.

Very easy to copy them and move them parallel , or adjust them as needed.