Reference Surface

Reference Surface tool is under Toolbox menu. This tool is very helpful when you need to measure objects vertical distance. The main idea of the tool is to set the zero elevation point from which the vertical measurement tool would begin to calculate distance.

• The blue horizontal line marks the zero elevation
• The red vertical line indicates what is below zero
• The green line shows what is above zero

In practice, it would look as follows. I have measured a window vertical size without using the surface tool. The result was unexpected in the way that the application shows the hight of the window 6.8m what is not what we aspected to get (see image below). The result of the measurement shows not the actual window vertical size but the window top hight above ground. . For the next measurement, I used the surface tool. And after I have set the zero point I used the vertical measurement tool to measure window vertical size and the result was 1.5m what is more realistic for the window hight (see screenshot below).

To start to use the tool click on Toolbox –> Reference Surface –> Set Cylinder or use a shortcut ALT + 3. See the screenshot below.

Under the Reference Surface icon you will find the following icons:

- Start to find a surface
- Cancel surface tool