ArcGIS 3D ANALYST

GEOINFORMATICS DIVISION

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WHAT IS A SURFACE?
 A surface is a continuous field of values that may vary over
an infinite number of points.

 For example, points in an area on the earth’s surface may

vary in elevation, proximity to a feature, or concentration
of a particular chemical.

 Any of these values may be represented on the z-axis in a

three-dimensional x,y,z coordinate system, so they are
often called z-values.

 3D Analyst uses two types of surface models: Rasters and

TINs.

 Rasters represent a surface as a regular grid of locations

with sampled or interpolated values.

 TINs represent a surface as a set of irregularly located 2

points linked to form a network of triangles with z-values
stored at the nodes.
SURFACE MODELS

Surface model of chemical concentration across an area with

points showing where the concentration was sampled 3
SURFACE MODELS

3D view
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3D ANALYST
The core of the ArcGIS 3D Analyst extension is the
ArcScene application. ArcScene provides the interface
for:

•Viewing multiple layers of 3D data

•Visualizing 3D data on a 2D surface

•Creating 3D surfaces

•Analyzing 3D surfaces

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RASTERS

 Most common representation, as elevation data is

widely available
 Represent a surface as a regular grid of uniformly
spaced locations with sampled or interpolated z-
values
 Resolution of grid represents the precision of the
rasters
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RASTERS

Disadvantage
 Surface discontinuities such as ridges are not well
represented
 Precision location for features such as peaks are
lost
Appropriate for small scale mapping applications and where
positional accuracy is not paramount

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TIN

 Triangulated Irregular Network

 Efficient & Accurate representation of surfaces
 Represents surfaces as contiguous non-
overlapping triangular faces
 Preserves the precise location and shape of
surface features

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TIN

 Supports a variety of surface analyses such as

calculating elevation, slope, volume, etc
 Disadvantage is, data not readily available and
require data collection
 Suited for large scale mapping applications with
positional accuracy

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TIN
 Consists of nodes that store z-values, connected
by edges

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TIN
 Nodes can be placed irregularly over surfaces
 Can have higher resolution in areas where a
surface is highly variable or where more detail is
desired and a lower resolution in areas that are
less variable or of less interest

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TIN
 Input features remain in the same position as
nodes or edges in the TIN
 Preserve all of the precision of the input data
while simultaneously model the values between
known points

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RASTE
R & TIN

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 TIN
“Triangulated” - An optimized set of
triangles from a set of points.
- A good representation of a surface
with z values uniquely define a plane in
three-dimensional space
“Irregular” - The key advantage of TIN
for surface modeling
- Points can be sampled with variable
density to model areas where change
in surface relief is abrupt
“Network” - The topological structure
that is implicit in a TIN.
- Enables sophisticated surface 14
analysis as well as compact
representation of a surface.
CREATING TINS

 Made from mass points

 Compiled with photogrammetric instruments
 Also produced from survey data, digitized contours,
rasters with z-values, point sets in files or
databases or operations on other TINs

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CREATING TINS
 Triangulation is
performed on the set
of points
 The triangles are
called faces, points
are nodes and lines of
faces are edges

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CREATING TINS
 Each face is part of a
plane in three
dimensional space
 All the faces meet
their neighbours at
each node and along
each edge
 Faces cannot
intersect each other
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TRIANGULATION
 Delaunay Triangulation – an algorithm to optmize
how faces model a surface
 Create triangles that collectively are as close to
equilateral triangles as possible
 This keeps the interpolation of elevations at new
points in closer proximity to the known input points

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TRIANGULATION

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TRIANGULATION
 After triangulation, the TIN stores a list of nodes for
each face and a list of neighboring faces for each
face
 Similar to planar topologies
 Difference is that nodes have elevations and faces
must be triangles instead of arbitrary polygons

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TOPOLOGY IN TIN

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USING SURFACE FEATURES
TO CREATE TIN

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USING SURFACE FEATURES
TO CREATE TIN

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TIN

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BUILDING A TIN

 Created from a combination of vector data sources

 Point, line and polygon features are used as input
data
 Some of these input features should have z-values
 Made from mass points, breaklines and polygons
 Created in ArcMap or ArcScene

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 BUILDING A TIN
Mass points
 Point height measurements
 Become nodes in the network
 Primary input into a TIN
 Determine the overall shape of
the surface
 More points in areas where the
surface is highly variable
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 BUILDING A TIN
Breaklines
 Lines with or without
height measurements
 Become sequences of
one or more triangle
edges
 Represent natural or
built features

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BUILDING A TIN
Hard Breaklines
 Represent a discontinuity in the slope of the surface
 Capture abrupt changes in a surface and improve
the display and analysis of TINs
Soft Breaklines
 Add edges to a TIN to capture linear features that do
not alter the local slope of a surface

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BUILDING A TIN
Polygons
 Represent surface features with area or boundaries
 Clip polygons – define a boundary for interpolation
Input data that falls outside the clip polygon is
excluded from interpolation and analysis operations

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BUILDING A TIN
Polygons
 Erase polygons – define a boundary for interpolation
Input data that falls within the erase polygon is
excluded from interpolation and analysis operations
 Replace polygons – set the boundary and all interior
heights to the same value

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BUILDING A TIN

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ELEMENTS OF TIN
 Mass Points : Observed spot elevation with an X,Y,Z
coordinate triplet
 Breaklines : Delineate where the terrains has a sharp
discontinuity in its surface, e.g., streams, ridges
 Exclusion Area : An area of equal elevation – most
commonly lakes
 Project Boundary: Exclude the surface outside an area of
interest
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ELEMENTS OF TIN

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Thanks
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