Does Generalize Support 3D?

[RyanCoodey]

Trying to generalize some 3D lines, but it does not seem to obey the distance tolerance in the Z space. Documentation doesn't seem to say anything either way. Would like to confirm if the generalizer even supports 3D?  If not, any recommendations on simplifying a 3D line?

Actually trying to do this in FME, but it was simplifying the same way... so using an ArcGIS GP was going to be the backup plan until it appears to not obey Z values either. Running 10.4 at the moment.

Thanks a lot!

[RyanCoodey]

Dan,

The majority of the lines are not straight nor do they follow any pattern. The lines are for wellbores starting at the surface and winding their way between geologic structures and other wellbores to a point thousands of feet below the surface. The means of getting there is manual and varies for each.

Abdullah,

The elevations are subsurface and come from survey points. A minimum curvature algorithm is used to closely generate the line between survey points. So a DEM wont work for us in this situation.

Thanks a lot guys!

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Ryan, so the boreholes have a fixed surface location and the X,Y,Z values represent their respective values with depth relative to the surface.  Interesting. So in this context, one could be interested in maintaining a perfectly straight borehole or or to be able to monitor the positional and depth values if you were doing something like horizontal drilling. 

Have you worked in ArcGIS Pro yet?

[RyanCoodey]

Dan, other than playing with Pro for about 10 minutes, I cannot say I have worked with it much. It had crossed my mind to check it out for this current issue... but thought it probably still used the same GP tools and calculations. If that is not the case, I will certainly check it out more?

FYI, the boreholes are not perfectly straight. Part of the problem with the generalize not obeying Zs is that it is straightening them out too much and deviating too far from the original line.

Thanks for all the help!

[NeilAyres]

Ryan,

do you have access to the original downhole survey data. This will be undoubtably more sparse than the interpolated curve fitting XYZ's you have now.

Could regenerate the drill trace using the survey dip, azimuth, depth.

[RyanCoodey]

Hi Neil,

Yes, we do. Since we already had these interpolated curves we thought it simplest to just generalize those (until this issue of course). Just connecting the dots from the survey though would also be too far off. Was thinking we probably need to add some logic during this interpolation to just throw away points until it deviates the max tolerance in the either X, Y or Z space. We still need to hold onto the high precision line as well though so would have to output two versions at this point.

Or we could probably just build our own FME job to do something like this. Start with the first vertex then loop through all of them until it is greater than the tolerance along any axis. Then hold on to that coordinate and do the same looping to the next. And so on. That sound like a viable option?

Thanks much!

[NeilAyres]

If you can do that using fme, you are better than I am at calculating dx,dy.dz using that interface. Would love to see it when done.

But what is the spacing downhole of the survey? Is it really that sparse? After all, the interpolated 1ft values are rather imaginary anyway.