I was assigned a neat project today. I have to estimate how much earth we will need in order to change the topography of a section of a golf course.

I will feed the 2-foot topos of how the land currently is into a 3D modeling tool. Once it is in a 3D format I will sculpt the terrain to how they want it to look. When it looks the way they want it I will just find the difference between my starting plane and my ending plane and, voila, I will know the volume of earth they will have to buy.

This is an aerial of the land I will be modeling.

This is a neat screen shot of the software. You can click on it for a larger image.