Converting 2D features to 3D features

It is often useful to have features with 3D geometry. Although you can display 2D features by draping them over a surface, 3D features are displayed more rapidly, and you can share them with others without having to send along the surface data.

You can convert existing 2D features to 3D in three ways:

• By deriving the height values of the features from a surface
• By deriving the height value from an attribute of the features
• By deriving the features' heights from a constant value

You can also digitize new features over a surface in ArcMap and interpolate the features' z-values from the surface during digitizing.