"Smooth Spline" tool ... how to fudge up a DEM !

[cascaderailroad]

The "Smooth Spline" tool is the greatest thing since they sliced and bagged white bread !

But the radius is way to large, and it "Smoothes" a huge 30m swath in all directions, ruining a DEM topography.

Requiring 10's of thousands of individual terrain adjustments on "Sensitivity Low - Radius Minimum".

I prefer not to press "Smooth Spline" tool, until a route is completed.

I use wireframe mode, and watch my track spline point arrows, to see if I am going too far under, or over, the original DEM terrain height.

I dial my time of day, until I achive a semi sweet dark chocolate color to my wireframe mode view.

The worst thing in the world is to press "Smooth Spline", and "Save", thereby ruining a DEM's topography.

The best way is to press "Save As" and re-name a route a slightly different name. ie: "Broad Top RR NG June"

I oftentimes hold off on using the "Smooth Spline" tool until many hours/days/weeks, down the line, until I get all my gradients ironed out.

Prematurely pressing the "Smoothe Spline" tool, only results in a floating track of + 0.20m above the terrain. lol !

 

[JIb228]

I'll agree. Though I do use the smooth spline tool as I lay track. I can all ways come back and make the terrain look right. Though in my case it has never screwed it up too much. Are use using the 10m grid or the 5m grid? I find that 5m doesn't have that big of a area when using the smooth spline tool.