Contour to TIN displays as solid vertical red line

[TashinaJasso]

I am working on a project, my goal is to create a 3D map of a county in NM. Here is where I got my contour file http://rgis.unm.edu/browsedata#, it is under Elevation-> Contours->New Mexico and its the only file that shows up titled 500 ft contour intervals. I also having a shp file of the boundary of the county I am interested in which is Luna County.

I open arc scene and I use the Create TIN tool and I then put the input as the contour file then i set height to elevation, surface type to masspoints and I add the polygon file as a softclip boundary.

The problem is that after this tools runs it displays as a solid vertical red line , what am I missing ? Is this file not appropriate for this?

I am using version 10

[EricRice]

Hi Tashina,

Your data is most likely using a geographic coordinate system.  TIN's should be constructed with data in a projected coordinate system.  As for ArcScene, it is interpreting the Z unit to be decimal degrees (from the GCS) so it displays like that.  You'll find it displays as you would expect if you have units of feet/meters instead of decimal degrees.

Best,
Eric