Markers are purely graphical and have no effect on the calculation of surfaces. The maximum number of markers you may use is 30000. In practice you will usually use many fewer than this.

Markers may either be read in with a design from Prefit, read directly from a text file or by Importing DXF Markers. Markers can also be entered manually using the Add Marker function in the Edit menu or copied and pasted into the markers table from another application such as a spreadsheet. They are stored as three-dimensional points in space and may be added, moved or deleted. All marker positions are stored in the design file whenever you save a design.

Each marker can be associated with a station in your design. Usually if you are importing markers that form the offsets of an existing design, you will set up the grid in Maxsurf to match the station spacing of the original design, and then set the station number of each marker to match its station in the offsets table. See Generate Grid from Markers on page 206 for information on automatically generating a grid from a set of markers.

Markers may also be associated or linked to a specific surface and location in that surface. Once linked to a surface, the marker takes on the colour of that surface. This function may be controlled with "Use Surface Colour for Drawing Parametrics" control in the Edit | Preferences dialog. If this control is turned off, markers that have been linked to a surface will be displayed in the same colour as the surface parametrics. This is not only useful for display purposes but can also be used to Measuring Surface Error and utilise for Fitting a NURB Surface to Markers.

Next: see Working with Markers - Procedures.