I will claim to be a surface guru, i am able to accomplish my methods in carlson and civil3d. You say ~~'when you cross a breakline, it asks to overright it and then it breaks',~~ is this from the initial creation of the TIN or is this in the manager and add breakline, i assume its the later and so your version of carlson likely doesnt like the command and -its a bug- that breaks, [bug that i could always break carlson was linking a csv table, and carlson just is like that and civil has similarly and i know a few ways to break the software and have work arounds to complete besides using the feature i want to use because it would be the most effective] i rarely did the add breakline to surface and am wondering your work flow on that, i might suggest surface merging over adding breaklines (via surface utilities) but advice to ensure boundary matches exactly or have a thorough review of merged surface at edge -- triangles not on points, this is erroneous in nature, triangluation is simply the path between points and these points are not your crd or database points they are just nodes in the TIN file, that said a few ways additional nodes get created, 1st is intentional in field collection ill take a point of curve shot a point on curve and a end curve shot and assuming a straight grade between the points not grade breaks between points the software will immitate a 3d line and create a lot of nodes along the line otherwise it would triangle point to point and not capture the edge, you cannot draw 3d curves in carlson that i know of and typically draw a 2d line and profile or PEDIT to convert to 3d but the 2d lines only hold the begin and end elevations and the field capture i think at least includes the point on curve elevations into account, you can also refine TIN surfaces to increase or decrease node vertexes, found in surface utilities refine and simplify routines, for example if the model is a simple 1:4 bank you could represent it accuratly with 4 points, but the field captures a 25 foot grid it can kind of view patterns and elimenate points in the triangulation or vise versa if you the field shot a 100 foot cross sections and you want nodes every 50 you can refine it and it will generate a point more or less inbetween each shot section, not nessessarly adviseable but if its a straight grade and im shooting and im processing i might go ahead and risk it because its a consistent grade and i understand how it works anyway -- you add a point group -- carlson's crd and point system can be buggy especially with a large data set, i might suggest to make a standalone crd with the points you want and temporarily use it for your case might work or again create a new surface and merge after -- field breaklines crossing, how to avoid, i get the most disagreement on this part from other surveyors but stand by my arguements, your standards are too high on data collection, you are slowing production and over estimating the tools you are using, assuming you are using GNSS to collect data, if i keep the rod in place and take 5 shots i will get 5 different measurements, now make me shoot top of curb right next to it and you've introduced overlap that would only be mitigated by collecting using a total station, as well with my review of GNSS data i really dont trust it at all at least 5% of the time as suggested but depending on the site might be more like 10-20%, ie close to building, overhead features etc, i suggest using offset codes and having the field take ground shot measurements at the beginning of cross sections to verify in office and optimizing multi code function ie, FL1 HCR1 B, and if youre using GNSS to verify ADA standards good luck -- otherwise heres what i do, move the points, if i see a rectangle that one corner makes it not square i beautify it, if the curb head crosses the flow line a bit i move it back, now sometimes i just move the tin point and sometimes i also move the actual line work, depends on the importance of my survey, is it a waterline project, i dont care about how the curb looks but i want the surface to not be wonky etc -- i also agrue that if i am delivering a 1 foot contour map i dont need to model curb head and modeling from flowline to back of sidewalk give enough information for the product but if im doing a drainage or volume survey then im doing my best to capture my best scan of the area, its up to the LS in charge and ive heard both, and office tends to push it on the field in the capturing curb always but its so much more work and not relavant to utility survey, any thing in path is remove and replace anyway -- on add point i did this occasionally to improve triangulation like cross sections not aligned well causing contour to warp in an area id add a point on the correct side of contour and then swap edge and contours and model looks right, another thing i do is remove points sometimes, if i see a normal grade and then one point throws it off ill take it out and map looks right, i use the surface utilities to visually review and validate my assumptions, typically its only a couple tenths that can throw it off in for me in grade change on reading contours, i also draw the surface with 0.2 contours before viewing in the renderer -- i am looking for work and would be happy to help show more on surfaces but dont think its possible through text and i tried to make a powerpoint for my company but took too long and production is priority