The Drawing Tools allow you to create a survey by drawing points, polylines, or boundaries that describe topographic features like natural ground, breaklines, roads, or planimetric features like building outline, manholes, etc. You can use these drawn geometries to create a topographic surface and export them to CAD. The drawing tools are available in the Drawing group of the HOME tab.


Drawing Tools in the HOME tab

Drawing tools in the Home ribbon menu.


Drawing Tools in the Mini Toolbar

Right click anywhere in the Viewport.

Mini toolbar menu of the drawing tools by right clicking in the Viewport.


Available Line Drawing Modes with Different Plans

Valley InterfaceRidge/Mountain/Peak Interface
Input Selection of the Polyline and Boundary tool for Valley plan users. Input Selection of the Polyline and Boundary tool for Ridge, Mountain, and Peak plan users.


Overview


Drawing Tools Overview

Virtual Surveyor offers multiple drawing tools to help you describe a topographic surface. Each tool is specialized in how they help you draw a representation of the terrain. The Polyline tool, and its specialized Arc tool, are for drawing breaklines and lines. The Boundary tool and its specialized versions (Circle and Rectangle) are grouped in another dropdown menu. Each tool, except Point and Arc, has an input selection option that changes how the line or boundary is drawn in order to make your job easier. The drawing mode you are using stays enabled (highlighted) in the ribbon until you disable it by right-clicking anywhere in the Viewport, or by clicking on the icon again. 


Switch between drawing tools. You can access the drawing tools by left-clicking the arrow below the drawing tool icon to see the dropdown menu options.

Drawing tools and their dropdown options.


Point Tool

The Point tool draws a vertex at ground level on the terrain with each click. 

  1. Enable the Point drawing mode in the HOME tab.
  2. Left-click in the Viewport to add points.

Drawing points down the edge of a driveway.


Polyline Tool

The Polyline tool can be used to draw breaklines for slopes, road survey lines, planimetric lines, etc., and any other terrestrial feature that requires a line to define the terrain. All lines by default are drawn on the terrain. The Virtual Surveyor app gives you multiple input options for the Polyline tool to be able to draw any terrestrial feature for survey grade information.


How the Polyline tool works: 

  1. Enable the Polyline tool in the HOME tab.
  2. Choose an input selection of the Polyline for the Line Drawing Mode.
  3. Left-click in the Viewport to add polyline vertices.
  4. Right-click to finalize your polyline.


Input selection options:

  • Free: can draw the line in any direction.
    Drawing the centerline of a road with the Free drawing mode of the Polyline tool.
  • Arc: draws a curved polyline in tangent to the straight line. The Arc input mode works well when drawing a straight line and needing to switch to a curved line without drawing a new line. The Arc input can be enabled while drawing to apply a tangent to any part of the polyline in order to match a curve on the terrain, then disabled to return to Free mode and drawing a straight line again.
    • Note: The Arc input mode creates as many vertices as necessary in order to adequately follow the curve.
  • Guided Breakline: draws a breakline that follows a break in a slope based on the distance between the first placed vertex and the second, as well as the direction you point it when following a break in a slope. 


Arc Tool

The Arc tool is a special type of polyline that differs from the Polyline Arc Line Drawing Mode option in that it draws a symmetrical pathway to draw an arc around a rounded corner instead of the tangent (free hand) approach that the arc drawing mode that the normal Polyline gives you.

  1. Enable Arc drawing mode in the HOME tab (Polyline dropdown menu).
  2. Draw an arc on a rounded corner using three clicks:
    • First click = arc starting point.
    • Second click = arc ending point. 
    • Third click = arc radius and completes the arc.

Using the Arc tool to properly draw the edge of a turn on a road.


Boundary Tool

The Boundary tool is a versatile tool for creating areas you want to survey within and topographic surfaces, making shapes for planimetric drawings, and the outlining stockpiles (to name a few). All boundary tool vertices are placed at the elevation of the terrain, same as the Polyline tool.

  1. Enable Boundary tool in the HOME tab.
  2. Select the Line Drawing Mode:
    • Free: regular vertex to vertex straight boundary.
    • Arc: draws a curved boundary as a tangent to the straight lines. Can be turned on/off while drawing to apply the arc mode to a specified part of the boundary.
    • Guided Breakline: semi-automatic topography line extraction. 
  3. Left click in the Viewport to draw the boundary vertices.
  4. Right-click to finalize the boundary.

Using the boundary tool to create an outline around a stockpile using both the Free and Arc editing modes.


Circle Tool

The Circle tool can be used for planimetric surveys or for outlining areas to create a topographic surface within. 


Edge First: draws a circle by starting at the edge of a circular feature and drawing across the circular object. This is often a more intuitive 

  1. Enable Circle drawing mode in the HOME tab (Boundary drop-down menu).
  2. Draw the circle; each circle is defined by 2 clicks:
    1. First click = point on the circle perimeter.
    2. Second click = another point at the diameter from the first click to complete the circle.
      Using the Edge First mode of the Circle drawing tool to generate a planimetric drawing around trees.


Center First: draws a circle from the center, outward. Drawing a circle from the center can be more effective at aligning the edges of the circle properly for your drawn geometry. 

  1. Enable Circle drawing mode in the HOME tab (Boundary drop-down menu).
  2. Draw the circle; each circle is defined by 2 clicks:
    1. First click = point on the center of a circular.
    2. Second click = another point at the radius of the first click to complete the circle.
      Using the Center First mode of the Circle drawing tool to quickly outline a feature on a roof.


Rectangle Tool

The Rectangle tool, like the circle tool, can be used for planimetric surveys and topographic survey areas, as well as drawing building outlines.


Side First: The Side First mode is an intuitive way to quickly draw a rectangle for a terrain feature. It is helpful to orient the terrain to get the appropriate rectangle angle and shape. 

  1. Enable Rectangle drawing mode in the HOME tab.
  2. Ensure Side First mode is selected.
  3. Draw the rectangle; each rectangle is defined by 3 clicks:
    1. First click = first corner of the rectangle.
    2. Second click = opposite of the first selected rectangle corner. 
    3. Third click = draw straight across to the third rectangle corner and left click to complete the rectangle.
      Using the Side First mode of the Rectangle drawing tool to quickly outline a feature on a planimetric site.


Diagonal First: The Diagonal first mode is most effective at aligning rectangles to be symmetrical no matter the orientation of your view in the Viewport. 

  1. Enable Rectangle drawing mode in the HOME tab (Boundary drop-down menu).
  2. Select the Diagonal First drawing mode.
  3. Draw the rectangle; each rectangle is defined by 3 clicks:
    1. First click = first corner of the rectangle.
    2. Second click = opposite of the first selected rectangle corner. 
    3. Third click = draw to the third rectangle corner and left click to complete the rectangle.
      Using the Diagonal First mode of the Rectangle drawing tool to quickly outline a feature on a stockpile site.


Drawing Guides

The drawing guides give you measurements on the terrain that you can snap to in order to help you keep a consistent distance between vertices on a polyline/boundary and/or keep a true direction. 


Distance

The Distance guide, when enabled, gives you a fixed radius around the previously placed point at a user defined distance. This is useful for design, breakline measurements, and just about any other geometric drawing you want to create equidistance between vertices. Using the Distance guide from the Line Drawing Mode input selection options to draw the line of a road every 4 meters apart.


Angle

The Angle guide, when enabled, gives you user defined angles at a degree to give you a true heading from the direction of the previously placed point. It is good for design, building outlines, and following long paths along roads to name a few.

Using the Angle Guide selection input from the Boundary tool to accurately outline a building for a planimetric drawing.


Geometry Snapping with Drawing Tools

The Geometry Snapping feature allows you to accurately connect existing geometry together. When drawing a geometry using any of the Drawing Modes, geometry snapping is enabled by default.


How snapping works. When enabled, Geometry Snapping always takes preference when drawing points or geometries. E.g. a purple circle will appear on any geometry that is in your drawing path, and your vertex will first snap to the nearby geometry rather than place itself on the terrain. Simply left click when the purple circle or dot appears to snap to that existing vertex or geometry.

Using geometry snapping to properly align the ground drawn line to the boundary of a building.


Disable Snapping While Drawing

Snapping is designed to streamline your workflow and make it easier to connect drawings and create clean surfaces, but you can switch to free placement whenever necessary by disabling geometry snapping:

  • Deselect the Geometry snapping box with a left click.
  • Use the hot key "G" on the keyboard to toggle snapping on and off.
  • Press and hold Ctrl to temporarily disable snapping when drawing a polyline or point over other geometric drawings.

Put a check in the Geometry Snapping box to enable geometry snapping.


Project Examples for Using Drawing Tools

  • Topographic survey of a natural area: Use the drawing tools to create a surface on your drone data and export the surface as CAD files.
    Topographic survey of a natural area.



  • Line survey in a quarry: Use the Polyline tool to draw breaklines. Polylines are usually required for mine surveys and are very useful for creating a Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN).
    Line survey of a quarry that can be translated as a TIN or as Contours.
  • Planimetric survey: Use Polyline and Boundary tools along with Move/Copy to significantly speed up the creation of comprehensive planimetric surveys.
    A Planimetric survey of a parking lot which includes islands, parking lines, and ADA parking spots.


Tips and Tricks 

  • You can always edit your drawn or imported lines via the TOOLS tab when drawn data is selected. 
    • Click on the Edit Vertex button in the TOOLS tab to begin your edit modes.
  • You can merge any two (or more) polylines together to create a single polyline. E.g., when you have a line drawn with the Polyline tool and another line that meets up with it drawn separately by the Arc tool.
  • Use Move/Copy tool on drawn geometries to move, duplicate, align, and rotate them quickly and efficiently for planimetric drawings.  
  • Use Extend/Trim line editing tools in conjunction with the drawing tools to quickly create exact representations of planimetric drawings or building outlines.
  • You can edit the vertices of drawn geometries to manually place them all at the same elevation on the Elevation Terrain. 
    • Draw the geometry with one of the tools described in this article. 
    • Select the object and enable the Edit Vertex tool in the TOOLS tab. 
    • Set the Edit Vertex Mode to Z. 
    • Select each vertex to edit using Ctrl+Left-click and manually set the Z value in the vertex coordinates box.
      Editing the Z height for vertices of a boundary.