Welcome to the 3DF Zephyr tutorials. In this recipe, you will learn how to automatically create sections, contour lines and track sections directly within 3DF Zephyr Aerial.
This tutorial requires 3DF Zephyr Aerial.
Thanks to the tools available in 3DF Zephyr Aerial, the sections and contour line generation can be done directly within Zephyr (manually or automatically).
This tutorial uses an aerial dataset, however, any dataset can be applied and used.
![]() | Dataset Download – The Cave (1.6GB) |
From the “Tools” menu (1) in the submenu “Sections and contour lines” (2) :
Pick a control point and pick a single section (3) – a visual help will appear in overlay inside the workspace, along with a window that will allow you to pick the target point cloud and to change the section parameters.
Pick certain control points along the track you wish to generate and pick track sections (4) – a visual help will appear in overlay inside the workspace, along with a window that will allow you to pick the target point cloud and to change the sections parameters, as well as picking the control points order and how many sections create between two control points.
Pickcontour lines generation (5) – a visual help will appear in overlay inside the workspace, along with a window that will allow you to pick the target point cloud and to change the contour line generation parameters. Please note how the suggested dimensions depend on the bounding box settings.
Thanks to this interface, common for all the aforementioned steps, you will be able to manually or automatically create the actual data you want:
When generated, the drawing elements may be exported to DXF or imported inside the Zephyr Workspace.
All these operations are very similar: learn to use the automatic generation (8) as soon as you since it can really cut the time you need to work a lot. Please also note how the drawing elements are manageable from the “Drawing elements” panel.
The next tutorial will show the shape from silhouette feature. Proceed to the next tutorial.