TIN in a geodatabase

Question

Hi,
Is it possible to store TINs in a geodatabase?
I read that "Terrain" could be used to create TINs in a geodatabase but the tool is not highlighted in ArcCatalog for me.

Thanks for your help,
Steph

TI · Answer

I have found that it will dutifully write the TIN to the folder that contains the fGDB (ie, the folder with the '.gdb' extension), but it is not actually part of the fGDB in the database sense.

It's rather dangerous behaviour, as nothing should ever touch those .gdb folders except ArcMap, as there is a danger of corrupting the database.  It's crazy that ArcMap will just write other files there, where it cannot later see them (from Catalog, or ArcMap).  It can read them initially, but you can't manually load them from there through ArcMap later.

michaelcollins1 · Answer

I created a TIN in a FGDB, only I cannot see it in the catalog window or ArcCatalog. The TIN displays on my map though.

RussellBrennan · Answer

Steph,

If you still have the source data that you used to build the TIN you can use this to build a new terrain. If you only have the TIN you can 'deconstruct' it back to features using the TinNode tool to get the point data, the TinLine tool to extract breaklines, and the TinDomain tool if a clip polygon was used.

Russell