Mud-Dauber

Yes, increasing the # of rings to 5 seems to solve the problem. Good suggestion.

Looks like I fixed it by reducing the density of the trench grid to 4'x4'. The surface computes with no difficulty with that grid and the remaining points and polylines.

I'm using Quicksurf for ACAD 2011 to map a complex water table located next to a river and am having problems with Quicksurf reporting "unstable" and stopping during grid processing. The area I'm mapping contains a variety of elevation points, including randomly scattered well elevation data, an interceptor trench with a central pumping well and a elevation data from a group of pumping wells adjacent to the trench. I'm trying to model the trench with a three-dimensional array of points that are configured to approximate a drawdown cone within the trench, based on elevations at one end and in the middle. The array is currently set up as a 2'x2' grid extending over a 4'x268' area. The river margin is represented by a series of polylines extracted from a photogrammetric topographic map, which contains all topographic elements in 3D. The drawing doesn't contain any extraneous extreme high or low elevation points. I'd like to model the area with a very tight (2'x2') grid, if I can, with exponential kriging, so I'll get nice, smooth contours and honor all the trench and pumping well data. Any suggestions on getting this model to work other than coarsening up the grid to 4'x4' or greater? I'm attaching a zip file containing the DWG with the points, a configuration file that represents what I'd like to use, and a surface file with a successful model at 4'x4' and the point data. BS.zip

I'm trying to perform surface math, by subtracting one surface from another, and contouring the resulting "." surface. The surfaces I'm creating have a lot of variable points, but only about 10' of relief across the site. I'm getting an "unstable" error when I attempt to contour the surface with a kriging algorithm and the gridding process aborts. If I select the standard one, the gridding process completes. I'm using kriging on the primary surfaces, so using standard on the difference surface isn't a problem. However, I would like to understand the source of the problem. I'm using Autocad 2011 and the corresponding Quicksurf 2011. I have a 64 bit Windows 7 Enterprise OS, 64-bit Autocad and Quicksurf, and 8 GB of memory.

I had an on-again, off-again issue with Quicksurf, which I've used for many years for contouring environmental and geologic data. The issue is contours with offset kinks in them when using the kriging algorithm, typically with the exponential variogram model with concentration data. The surface will grid and contour as usual, but some, not all, of the contours will contain kinks in them in which the contours are offset a short distance, usually roughly equivalent to the grid spacing in short segments. The offset contours have right angle connecting segments to the main contour pline. It's a pain to have to do a lot of editing of these offset segments to obtain a clean figure for sharing with workgroups and insertion in reports, so I'd like to find out if I could make them magically disappear. The problem is more common with certain datasets than others. I can send examples, with data files, Quicksurf and Autocad files, if that would help Any suggestions and is anyone else experiencing this? I usually design my variograms using the VARIO function. Otherwise, the program rocks and I couldn't live (in consulting) without it.

Does anyone have a clue if QuickSurf 2010 will run on top of progCAD 2010 Professional? The latter is supposed to be Autocad compatible in most ways. Also, are there any new features in QS 2010 that aren't in the excellent version 5.1 (which I am still using with Autocad 2000i)?

I need to open a data file downloaded from a Garmin GPS III+ that consists of a *.gdb file. When I attempt to open the file, Global Mapper 10 reports that the overlay type cannot be determined from the file name and pops open a dialog box with a number of available overlay types, beginning with ACE (altitude corrected. Which overlay should I pick? I have Garmin's MapSource and can export to UTM DXF that way, but a direct import to Global Mapper would be nice. Thanks for some help!