Upon opening Surface by sections, it's first necessary to name the surface and determine the bounding box. Position the bounding box in the correct area, modifying the dimension and orientation as needed.
Note: The bounding box cannot be modified once sections have been created. For this reason it is important to include all elements that should appear in the surface upon creation of the bounding box.
At first, the list of sections will be empty. Using the previously defined bounding box, sections will be created following the specified Height and Step values. Click on Create all sections to insert stations at the specified Step intervals. Sections can be added at specific elevations using the Pick new section button or by entering in an elevation in the provided text box.
To begin creating a template of the section, click on the icon in the Edit column for the specific section and a secondary window of the sectional view will appear. Check the option Pick and add or Pick and insert and start picking points in the secondary window. The surface can be closed or open, simply check the Closed option for a closed object. If a template has been created beforehand, it can be loaded from a CSV file by clicking on the Load icon.
If points are to be added to an already created template, the Pick and insert option is the most useful because it will insert points between the existing ones.
When changing sections, by pressing Next, by clicking on the Edit icon for the next section or by selecting a section in the list and pressing Update section, the template from the previous section will be copied to the new section. This speeds up the process for vectorizing different elevations of the element; only slight adjustments may be needed for the next section.
This is what the template will look like in the main viewer for VisionLidar.
To edit a given section, it must be opened via the icon in the Edit column. Make sure the Edit points option is active. Note that it won't be possible to rotate the primary or secondary view when this option is active. The secondary window will appear and it will be possible to edit the template points by pressing the "CTRL" key and clicking and dragging specific points. Maintaining the CTRL key pressed and selecting one or many points will move them if you drag the mouse with a left-click. The points selected will be highlighted in yellow. Once the position of the point is adequate, release the CTRL key.
Template points can also be selected by clicking the “Rectangular selection” icon on the top left of the section and creating the selection window with the mouse. All points within the window will be selected.
If a line is selected instead of a point with the CTRL key pressed, the entire template and all its points will be highlighted. The whole template can then be displaced.
Furthermore, the secondary view cannot be rotated when editing points. If the window had been rotated before the Edit points function is triggered, it can be reinitialized perpendicularly to the alignment with the designated icon at the top left of the secondary window.
To change the active section in the secondary view, the Previous or Next options can be clicked or the Edit icon of a specific station can be selected. “Ctrl + 1” or “Ctrl + 2” will also work if the user would like to switch between previous and next stations. Going forward to empty sections, the template is applied semi-automatically to the sections for which the stations are empty. Repeat the steps explained to edit and displace points from the template.
Clicking on the Create surface option will create a surface on the screen and will add the surface to the Explorer in the Objects tab for the Surface type. Note that clicking on Erase surface will delete the surface from the screen and also from the Explorer. Click on Export to export the surface to a specific format.
