Surface Help.......Please

Recently found that me and a few others were building the surface the wrong way. Now I am having problems trying to get things to come out correctly. I am using AutoCad 2005 Civil, LDD, Survey and am trying to get the contours for a road project. This is how I am attempting this unabtainable feat. Create new surface with Terrain Model Explorer, Add Point Group with the points the survey crew collected, drew 3D Polylines by elevation along the lip of gutter on both sides of the road, created breaklines using proximity by polyline and selecting the flowline, median islands, and lane lines, built the surface using Terrain Model Explorer, Imported 3D lines into drawing, then created the contours and it just doesnt come out right! Maybe im missing something or just doing it totally incorrect? Hope someone can help me out with this one.
Thanks

On 9 Aug 2005 09:56:50 -0700, bambam_13 snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
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Why do you want to produce contours anyway?
Are the surveyed points collected the existing ground?
And you want to do excavation/fill volume calcs from the data - existing vs. proposed?
Or do you want to stakeout your new road, in which case you probably want cross sections and/or to make a dtm from the breaklines & ponits for the proposed road?
If you decide what it is you want to accomplish it will be much easier to figure out how to do it.
Happy Trails To You

Yes they are surveyed points collected from the existing ground. I need to get the excavation/fill volume calcs from the exsisting vs. proposed ground.
Thanks

On 9 Aug 2005 16:06:04 -0700, bambam_13 snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
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Let me first state that I do not do this work in Acad - I use Terramodel.
I also do not do any volume calcs based on "contours" as such - I make DTMs from points and added breaklines, use a 3D viewer to fix where I screw up, then use a command in TM to compare surfaces and do calcs, make an isopach layer showing cut/fill locations & volumes, etc.
Can you do the same functions in LDD? If so, this is probably what you want to do, especially on the proposed surface, not make contours.
There are other SW pkgs around that do a good job of comparing volumes using contours, especially for existing ground surfaces, such as Trimble's Paydirt/Sitework.
If you have the luxury, it is always a good diea to do your calcs using at least 2 separate methods, just to see if you can get the same answer. I really should delve a little deeper into LDD myself to do this, but I never seem to get/take the time.
What about cross sections?
Do you have point codes on the surveyed existing ground so you can automagically create breaklines? TM does this with very few commands if the codes are all there - maybe LDD does also?
Did you do the original road design, or is it something someone else did and you must do the estimates for? It makes a big difference, because you can usually ask for (and sometimes even receive???) more info than they initially give you, ie the cross sections at stations with coded points - wonderful for volumes and later stakeouts.
You should also be able to get borehole info - soil & rock types at specified depths from existing surface, so you can do those calcs based on material types, and get the waste out of your re-use estimates easily.
Again, this is all easy to process im TM - LDD dunno?
Happy Trails To You