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Re: converting a paper contour map to a digital 3D image

There are a few products for the Mac that can do the XYZ to usable data set conversion for you. The problem is getting to the XYZ data step.

The best bet is to obtain data for the map in question if it is a USGS topo map. They have digital data at 30 arc second resolution for the entire US and I think most of it is now free. If you want higher resolution they have that as well but you will have to pay for it. If you have another type of map that you want to get data for then you will probably have to resort to digitizing the contours yourself. This is relatively straight-forward if you have a digitizing tablet at your disposal. Another way to do it is to scan it in (splicing multiple pieces if necessary) and then digitizing contours in the now-digital version.

Once you have either DEM data or simple XYZ data then your choices for programs on the Mac are fairly good. FormZ is one of the better 3 modelers when it comes to handling this type of data and it can build terrain directly from contour lines. There are a few programs out there that will load DEM data so I won't get into a list of them. After that, just export to the 3D format that you need.

The problem with automating the first step is that many times the contours are not continuous on a map. They are interupted by text, symbols, and other markup on the map. But, if you can find a program that does it, more power to ya'. :)

Christopher Holland
Concept House


On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 12:08 AM, email@hidden wrote:

Hi all,

I asked about this sometime ago but did not get a reply.

perhaps it is too difficult to do.

What I was after was a way to take a contour plot of a terrain (or any thing fro that matter) and convert the contour intervals and positions into a digital x,y, z type data set for use in a 3D visualization program.

Any ideas?

Something along the lines of data thief or its successors would be ideal. ie be able to follow a selected contour and generate a set of xy points that related to it.

I suspect that it would be tough to do something like that in a completely automatic sense but maybe...

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks very much.

tony
_______________________________________________________
Dr. Anthony P. Scott,
Computational Quantum Chemistry Gp,	Office Ph.: 	61-2-6125-3573
Research School of Chemistry,		Dept. Ph.:  	61-2-6125-3637
Australian National University,			Fax: 			61-2-6125-0750
Canberra, ACT 0200,				
AUSTRALIA.

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 >converting a paper contour map to a digital 3D image (From: email@hidden)



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