Landxml Surfaces in MicroSurvey Products

All MicroSurvey CAD and Field products allow you to work with surfaces.  The two supported formats are *.QSB (a format saved by MicroSurvey CAD Products) and Landxml (a universal format defined by Landxml.org)

Landxml files can contain a variety of information types, but when importing surfaces, MicroSurvey products will import points and Faces in order to define the surface.  When creating landxml files in other programs users may see options to add boundaries, breaklines or 3D points to a landxml file.  These will safely be ingnored by MicroSurvey.

Occasionally the support team hears reports from users who have been provided with a surface in landxml format, but cannot import the file.  The support team can usually find the cause by obtaining a copy of the landxml file and inspecting it.  We can use a text editor to open the file.  Below you will find an annotated example of how the key sections of a landxml file should be configured so that MicroSurvey can import it:

The Header can contain a variety of information about the source and units:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<LandXML xmlns="http://www.landxml.org/schema/LandXML-1.2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.landxml.org/schema/LandXML-1.2 http://www.landxml.org/schema/LandXML-1.2/LandXML-1.2.xsd" version="1.2" date="2022-08-03" time="14:37:52" readOnly="false" language="English" >
<Project name="" desc="" />
<Application name="Bentley" desc="LandXML conversion" manufacturer="Bentley Software" version="2022" manufacturerURL="www.carlsonsw.com">
</Application>
<Units>
<Imperial areaUnit="squareFoot" linearUnit="foot" volumeUnit="cubicFeet" temperatureUnit="fahrenheit" pressureUnit="inHG" diameterUnit="inch" />
</Units>

In the next section one or multiple surfaces are defined:

<Surfaces>

In the next section, the first surface is defined. 

NOTE: the "Surface name" should be limited to numbers, spaces, underscores and alphabet characters.  Other characters can cause issues.

<Surface name="Surface 1" >
<Definition surfType="TIN" >

In the next section points are described:

NOTE: Each entry should contain a unique id and X,Y and Z coordinates

<Pnts>
     <P id="1">775431.17036070 2603215.78860469 62.900000</P>
     <P id="2">775467.81809768 2603203.42319314 62.500000</P>
     <P id="3">775477.54638035 2603118.66893611 62.900000</P>
...

     <P id="466">775766.41835926 2603066.12519858 62.992555</P>
     <P id="467">775771.33112918 2603062.69714268 62.894698</P>
     <P id="468">775805.74445278 2603029.48817394 62.505886</P>
</Pnts>

In the next section faces are described:

NOTE: Each entry should contain 3 point ids from the list above.  This describes to the program how to create each tringle that forms the surface.

<Faces>
     <F>375 22 376</F>
     <F>19 12 20</F>
     <F>14 12 15</F>

...

     <F>353 465 466</F>
     <F>467 468 353</F>
     <F>466 467 353</F>
</Faces>

Additional Surfaces may follow in the same landxml file:

<Surface name="Surface 2" >
<Definition surfType="TIN" >