An overview of the TIN Management toolset
You can create TIN surfaces from vector data containing elevation information using the ArcGIS 3D Analyst TIN Management tools. You can create an empty TIN with a spatial reference and add features to it when they become available. You can also add features to existing TINs to enforce real-world structures in the TIN surface model.
A TIN can be constructed by triangulating a set of vertices. The vertices are connected with a series of edges to form a network of triangles.
The resulting triangulation satisfies the Delaunay triangle criterion, which ensures that no vertex lies within the interior of any of the circumcircles of the triangles in the network. If the Delaunay criterion is satisfied everywhere on the TIN, the minimum interior angle of all the triangles is maximized. The result is that long, thin triangles are avoided as much as possible.
The edges of TINs form contiguous, nonoverlapping triangular facets that can be used to capture the position of linear features that play an important role in a surface, such as ridgelines or stream courses.
Learn more about the components of a TIN
Learn more about creating TIN surfaces
The following is a list of the tools in the TIN Management toolset and a brief description of each.
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Tool |
Description |
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Creates a copy of a triangulated irregular network (TIN) dataset. |
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Creates a TIN dataset. |
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Redefines the data area, or interpolation zone, of a triangulated irregular network (TIN) based on its triangle edge length. |
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Adds features from one or more input feature classes that define the surface area of a triangulated irregular network (TIN). |