Surface Creation and Analysis

With ArcGIS 3D Analyst you can create new surfaces from existing data sets. For many applications, you may need to create a surface in order to drape other features over it. You can create these surfaces as regularly spaced grids or as triangulated irregular networks (TINs). These surface data types are appropriate for some specific data analysis and can be created in a number of ways including

• Inverse Distance Weighting

• Kriging
• Natural neighbor technique (interpolating a surface from points)
• Spline
• Topo to Raster interpolation (topologically correct surface generation)
• Trend interpolation
• TIN creation using vector features (includes hard or soft break lines, mass points, and much more)

Once the surface data has been created it can be used for further analysis including enhanced visualization, such as creating a shaded relief, or for more advanced analysis such as determining the visibility from a specific position or route.

ArcGIS 3D Analyst tools are part of the geoprocessing framework in ArcGIS and can be used with ModelBuilder, dialog boxes, scripting languages such as Python, the command line, and ArcObjects, a library of software components that make up the foundation of ArcGIS. Available surface analysis tools include

• Hillshade
• Slope
• Aspect
• Curvature
• Cut/Fill
• Viewshed
• Line of sight
• Surface length
• Surface spot
• Surface volume
• Interpolate shape
• Reclass
• Slice
• Create contours