Terrain Triangulation Method Improvement

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07-13-2016 12:38 PM
Status: Open
DataSteward
New Contributor III

This borders on a bug...

I've been working with terrains that have a portion of nodes in a grid pattern.  The points are two-dimensionally equidistant and ArcGIS (10.2) seems to use a randomization method for deciding which diagonal to triangulate across given a perfect square of points (2 dimensionally).  Each time I build the terrain with the same points, different diagonals are chosen.  I even have some evidence that triangulation was somehow re-randomized within a terrain that was not rebuilt (I just moved the geodatabase between drives).

This results in an unpredictable surface model.

But the points are not truly equidistant when considered in 3 dimensions (including z-values).  Shouldn't terrain triangulation consider z-values to find the shortest diagonal?