If one or more area features are selected with
the Digitizer tool,
a right-click will Advanced
Feature Creation Options submenu and the Create/Flatten
Terrain from Selected Area Feature(s) option will appear when right-clicking.
Selecting this option will allow you to create a new elevation grid using
Elevation Grid Creation Options dialog (below) covering the selected area
features that has all points within the selected area feature(s) set to
the elevation of those area features.
Any portions of the new elevation grid outside of the area features will
be set to invalid, allowing any underlying terrain to show through. If
you also select the option that elevations are relative to the height
of any underlying terrain, the new terrain surface will have heights equal
to the original height of the terrain at each sample location within the
area offset by the elevation value of the area feature. This functionality
is useful for adjusting all elevation values within an area by some amount
(the area elevation).
This feature provides a very easy way to do things like flatten an area, like a lake, in underlying terrain layers. Just assign an ELEVATION attribute to your area feature, then select it and choose this option to flatten everything inside that area to the elevation attribute value. This is also a nice way to create an elevation grid representing a city-scape from building outlines with ELEVATION attributes.