Create contours from elevation points

By Ellen Finkelstein

Surveyors, land-use engineers, and architects often need to create contours that show the elevation of land. You can easily do this using the SPLINE command.

First, set an easily visible point style. Choose Home tab> Utilities panel drop-down, Point Style in the Drafting & Annotation workspace. (This is the DDPTYPE command or PDMODE system variable.)

Then use the POINT command to insert the points into the drawing. If you have a list of points in an external file, you can create a script file that sets PDMODE, starts the POINT command, and inserts all the points. You’ll need to strip the external file of everything except the points and then format them (in a text-only file) so that each one is on a separate line.

Finally, use the SPLINE command. Use the NODE osnap variable to snap to the points.

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Ellen Finkelstein

Ellen Finkelstein is the author of the best-selling AutoCAD & AutoCAD LT Bible, which started with R14. Ellen has written extensively on AutoCAD, including articles for Autodesk’s website and features for AutoCAD’s Help system. Ellen’s first book was AutoCAD For Dummies Quick Reference.

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