Why I Cannot Target Specific Surface?

Ok, here’s the situation. You created the surface called “Surface A” from a corridor called “Corridor A”. You then created a surface called “Combined Surface” in which you pasted first the EG surface and then the “Surface A” surface into to get a composite surface.

You now want to target the “Combined Surface” in a new Corridor you are creating but the surface “Combined Surface” is not appearing in the list of surfaces that you can chose from as a target in the Target Mapping dialog box.

In case you were wondering why…learn after the jump.

The issue is pretty simple in fact, and we are in the circular reference conundrum. The circular reference happens whenever two or more objects (or drawings) are trying to reference objects from each other. Also, our “Combined Surface” is derived and dependent on the EG surface and “Surface A”, so whenever one updates the other one is updating too because they are dynamic (which is in most cases a good thing).

Then, I guess the next logical question for you would be how do we gain the ability to target the “Combined Surface” to daylight. The answer - it is not possible unless you make this dynamic link broken. But there is a workaround that involves creating a copy of the Combined Surface or which will not be dynamic and as such will be listed in a Pick A Surface dialog. Here are the specific steps:

1. Right-click on “Combined Surface” in Prospector and choose Export LandXML

2. Select the location where you will save your XML file

3. Open XML file you created and Edit Surface name in XML Notepad (I called it test) and save the changes.

Note: XML Notepad can be downloaded from here.

4. In command line type LANDXMLIN command and browse to the location of the XML file you created in step 2

5. Import XML file (the surface will be created over the one that already existed)

6. Right-click on Corridor A and go to Properties

7. In Parameters tab of Corridor Properties click on Target and confirm that you can now pick the surface “test”. This way you will have your original Combined Surface untouched and dynamic but will be able to target its identical copy.

I hope this works for you, too.