Creating a single contour

Available with 3D Analyst license.

Contour lines are a familiar way of representing surfaces on maps. A contour is a line through all contiguous points with equal height (or other) values.

You can create contour lines for a raster, triangulated irregular network (TIN), LAS dataset, or terrain dataset surfaces. You can create contour lines by clicking a point on a surface to create a single contour line that passes through it.

1. In ArcMap or ArcScene, click the Create Contours button .
2. Click the surface at the point where you want the contour.

The contour is added as a 3D polyline graphic. The height of the contour is written to the status bar.

Note:

• The 3D polyline graphic can be copied and pasted among ArcMap, ArcScene, and ArcGlobe.
• For information about enabling the interactive tools with terrain datasets, see Interactive tools for terrain datasets.