For a hydrology project i am working on i was given a very detailed contour line file as my set of data to work with. As we know, all of the spatial analyst hydrology tool require a raster set to work with. Since the contour lines are so detailed when i try and use the topo to raster tool it says that their are to many points to convert. For the mean time i have been creating a TIN from my contour lines and then converting this to a raster however, since my initial raster wasnt really a uniform shape when i create the tin it interpolated very large areas which largely skew my hydrology analysis.
I know that their is a simplify line tool i could use to possibly use the contour to topo tool but unfortunately my agency doesnt have a license for this.
Does anyone have any better way of preserving data while converting my contours to a raster
(contours at some points are .5 feet.)
Thanks,
Ben