Surface interpolation difficulties in ArcScene

[MeganCardenas]

I am literate with surface interpolation methods but this is a problem I have not encountered before in Arc.  I have been trying to make a depth to bedrock map, so I can figure out the thickness of the material overlying the bedrock beneath the ground surface.  I want a vector model so I planned on using a TIN and I have two major problems:

1.  I specify the output TIN, import the spatial reference and mass points (with a positive number for a depth) and a softclip boundary polygon.  The resultant TIN is empty and the error is the most generic message and does not help "ERROR 999999: Error executing function.  Failed to execute (CreateTIN).".  Yesterday and the day before when I could get the TINs to work, it would use the depths as elevations and the deeper the bedrock is supposed to be, the higher altitude the TIN would display.  Which brings me to the second problem

2.  Depths are being confused as elevations.  I have made surfaces of groundwater levels/potentiometric surfaces and bathymetric surfaces from positive values for depth before, and I am wondering if that is because I already had elevation surfaces in that workspace which could have provided the surficial reference for the depth?  Most of the surfaces I have built have been in Arc 9.3 but I took ESRI's online training class: "Creating 3D Data Using Arc 10" to learn the differences.  In one of the provided exercises subsurface TINs of geologic formations are made and multipatches extruded between the TINs.  I had no problems with this depth-elevation confusion in the module.  The common denominator seems to be that all the workspaces I have used before had some kind of an elevation surface already in the workspace..which I could do in this case except that the DEM is huge and does not provide adequate resolution for the area I want to work in.  I tried to make a TIN from using our contour lines as mass points, but the resultant TIN was empty: see above problem. 

In a bit of a conundrum and NEED to have this done by the end of the week as it has taken far too long already, and the end of the week is at 5PM today.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[JeffreySwain]

There seems to be a lot going on with your project based on the description.  If you are having issues with the points as a TIN, then I recommend trying to convert the points to an interpolated raster, a terrain or try a smaller subset of the points, since TINs have a finite size based on the nodes.  It is possible to try and create a TIN that is too large or complex and you will generate that error. 

In terms of your questions about workspaces, the TIN generation will follow whatever field you specify as the 'elevation' or height field.  If it is confused, perhaps the wrong field was used?  The Extrude between tool requires two TINs and a polygon.  I recommend being sure you have coverage overlap with both the TINs completely and be sure your polygon does not have a coincident boundary.  So the TINs will need to cover more area than the polygon.  If you look at the diagram for the Extrude Between tool then you will see a good example. 

If you are under a time crunch, rather than wait on the benevolent input from fellow users, try calling in to Esri Support.  You will find they are much more responsive and more than likely will have the information you need to proceed.

[MeganCardenas]

Thanks for the reply

I ended up calling ESRI support so there is less urgency now.  The problem was the original table that I used to create the feature class, there was an invalid extent which threw everything off so the TIN is done. 

I was able to make a profile and invert the y-axis to make what looked like a depth map, but I am still unable to view the depths as depths.  Does the field name need to read "depth"?  Or do they have to be negative records in order to display as depths?

Thanks again

[JakubSisak]

TIN creation does not always work.  There a few workarounds which seem to help.  How long is your path to the target TIN?  I have tested this on the same computer and if the path to the TIN workspace was very long, the process consistently failed. When I moved the entire workspace a few directories closer to root the same process was successful. Often I am unable to create TIN with similar errors you describe.  When I restart the computer and run the same process from a new map document (I almost always run these from inside an MXD) the same process succeeds. I reported a similar problem (every step documented + screen captures) to ESRI and send them the data and they were successfully generating and editing the TIN from the same data I sent them on their end.  I then tried creating a new document and placed the data/workspace in a different location on the harddrive and was able to successfully create and edit the TIN. 

While I was still encountering issues with creating and editing TINs the ESRI support team provided me with a fairly harsh solution:
1. Close ArcMap and ArcCatalog
2. Go to C : Users \ (profile) \ AppData \ Roaming
3. Rename the ESRI folder to OldESRI
4. Run the tools again to see if the results are correct this time

I was not able to try this solution because i have a lot of customization, add-ons, custom toolboxes, symbology, etc. and was afraid that rebuilding everything could impact some of my critical project.

Also try creating your TINs without clipping it. once you have the TINs you whish to extrude, use the clipping polygon as the input polygon into the extrude tool. If you need to show your TINs clipped in your model, clip them with Edit TIN after you have created it.

Hope this helps.

[JeffreySwain]

I am confused about your 'depth as depths' statement. To see the layers below the ground you have to make the elevations below the surface or negative.  The TIN should be the reflection of the points and breaklines that you input.  If you are looking to extrude the TIN, they I would recommend converting the TIN to a multipatch or a polygon to extrude.  I have seen utilizing points and then specifying depth to demonstrate the depth and even using the depth points to interpolate to a surface, but not depths displayed in a TIN.  If you had a polygon layer you could have a field marked depth and then make the value negative in the extrude tab of the layer properties.   

There is some information on displaying some subsurface modeling here and a subsurface analysis video.  You can accomplish this with 3d Analyst, but you need to generate multiple TINs for each layer and then extrude between them with the tool of the same name to create the multipatch.