Help to Simplify or Smooth Contours

[Anonymous User]

Original User: AlanToms

Hello,

I need some help making contour lines more visually appealing and easier to read what is going on.  Cartography is not my strong point.

We have 1ft contours derived from lidar flown a few years ago.  The problem is that they are extremely ???bendy??? and the smaller the scale the more difficult it is to see what is going on.  What I am going to do is make 2ft and 5ft contours to be used strictly for visual purposes, but I need help on how to smooth them out.  Which tool should be used, Simplify Lineor Smooth Line?  Anyone have suggestions on the offset or tolerance values to use?

Thank you for the help.
Alan

[DonovanCameron · Accepted solution]

Do you have the source data used to make the contours?

It's usually easier to coarsen/generalize a raster (like a DEM) and re-generate the contours from that instead of trying to generalize the vectors (contours) to avoid topology errors.

Both tools do give you the option to flag topology errors, but I try to avoid dealing with those errors in the first place.
Since this is for displaying data, and not analyzing the data, the smooth tool would give visually good results.

They both require Desktop Standard/Advanced.

[Anonymous User]

Original User: AlanToms

Do you have the source data used to make the contours?

It's usually easier to coarsen/generalize a raster (like a DEM) and re-generate the contours from that instead of trying to generalize the vectors (contours) to avoid topology errors.

Both tools do give you the option to flag topology errors, but I try to avoid dealing with those errors in the first place.
Since this is for displaying data, and not analyzing the data, the smooth tool would give visually good results.

They both require Desktop Standard/Advanced.

I do have DEMs at various sizes.  I will run the Contour tool and see how it goes.

Thank you for the help, it is appreciated.
Alan