Fundamentals of creating profile graphs

Profiles show the change in elevation of a surface along a line. They can help you assess the difficulty of a trail or evaluate the feasibility of placing a rail line along a given route.

The Profile Graph tools on the 3D Analyst interactive toolbar are used to derive a graphic representation of one or many profiles. Profiles can be generated from any 3D line feature(s) drawn over a surface. You can create profiles on either a raster, triangulated irregular network (TIN), or terrain dataset surface. Profile graphs can also be derived by drawing a 3D line over a set of points or multipoints.

For information about interactive profile graph options and settings, see Understanding the 3D Analyst toolbar options.

For information about enabling the interactive tools with terrain datasets, see Interactive tools for terrain datasets.

Once a profile graph has been created, it appears as a floating window in ArcMap. You can then modify the titles and symbology and even save or export the profile graph to use with other applications. To access further analysis capabilities for a profile graph, right-click in the profile graph window to open the shortcut menu. For more information about the options on the context menu, see Graph options.

The following list provides examples for generating profile graphs from various analysis results:

• Digitizing a 3D line from a surface using the Interpolate Line interactive tool.
• 3D line features from a line feature class.
• Line of sight visibility analysis results from using the Line of Sight interactive tool.
• Steepest path surface analysis results from the Steepest Path interactive tool.
• Digitizing a 3D line across a multipoint or point feature class.

The Profile Graph tools will generate a profile for 3D line features. If you want to generate a profile of a 2D line feature, such as 2D roadways or waterlines data, convert them to 3D features. You can convert features from 2D to 3D based on an underlying surface by either digitizing them with the Interpolate Line tool or by using the Interpolate Shape geoprocessing tool.

Profile graph tools

Three Profile Graph tools are available to generate graphical representations of your 3D data. The following table describes each profile tool available.

Profile Graph Tools

Profile Graph Tool	Creates a profile graph from any 3D line(s).
Point Profile Tool	Creates a profile graph from points (either points or multipoints) along a surface. For more information, see Using the Point Profile tool.
Terrain Point Profile Tool	Creates a profile graph from symbolized nodes of a terrain dataset surface. When points of a terrain are symbolized, the graphical window will display the corresponding symbology of the points. For more information, see Using the Terrain Point Profile tool.