HOW TO
An XYZ file (*.xyz) is an ASCII file or a data file containing a set of vertices with floating point numbers representing the X, Y, and Z coordinates of a vertex.
AT3D_XYZ V01.00 Mesh A Rows 6 Columns 4 Order By_Row Data -7.430273 -6.964596 8.349577 1.189729 13.366331 15.433069 25.109549 24.411971 16.577943 39.351235 49.752780 24.915375 -8.720664 -3.218530 -0.832028 -0.100661 17.112397 6.251463
It is not possible to open XYZ files in ArcMap directly; hence, the file must first be converted to point features and imported to ArcMap. With the elevation values in the XYZ file, the data can be used to create terrain for 3D modeling or contour lines.
The instructions provided describe how to create contour lines from an .xyz file.
For more information on how to use the ASCII 3D To Feature Class tool, refer to the following ArcGIS Web Help page: ASCII 3D to Feature Class.
Note: Use one of the surface interpolation methods such as IDW, Kriging, Natural Neighbor, and Spline to create a DEM. For more information on the available interpolation methods in ArcMap, refer to the following ArcGIS Web Help page: Comparing interpolation methods. The simplest method, using Spline is outlined below.
For more information on how to use the Spline tool, refer to the following ArcGIS Web Help page: Spline.
For more information on how to use the Contour tool, refer to the following ArcGIS Web Help page: Contour.
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