The tools described in this chapter allow one to generate attractive three-dimensional representations from grids or height and slope surfaces, as well as to assign materials to apply quality rendering.
A grid file is a set of 3D coordinates that are planimetrically defined in a regular square grid. MDT works with two types of grid files: ASCII (.MLL extension) and binary (.MLB extension) files. The former has the advantage that the file’s contents can be viewed with a text editor, and they can easily be processed by other programs. Nevertheless, the large size of the files is a disadvantage. In order to avoid this, binary grid files can be used to provide quicker and more efficient access, although they do not have the aforementioned advantages.
TcpMDT