How to use "Lines are dashed" when loading contours

Good morning, newish and infrequent user here trying to avoid having to manually draw contours in on a site plan. 

In this instance, the proposed contours are drawn in the dark red dashed lines (screenshot attached). Kubla tries to import each dash with multiple closed polylines. I'm trying to use the "Lines are dashed feature" to avoid this problem but no matter what I enter in the box for dash length, the box turns red and there's no change to the number of flat lines. I've tried whole numbers, decimal numbers (with and without a leading zero), a "-" symbol, the equal sign, random characters... heck, I even tried "short", "long", "curvy" and "squiggly" in a fit of frustration. Is this something that's just not working and I shouldn't be wasting time with it or what? I tried searching the forum and the user manual and didn't have any luck and don't have time to watch all the YT vids to see if it's addressed somewhere.

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Good morning, newish and infrequent user here trying to avoid having to manually draw contours in on a site plan. 

In this instance, the proposed contours are drawn in the dark red dashed lines (screenshot attached). Kubla tries to import each dash with multiple closed polylines. I'm trying to use the "Lines are dashed feature" to avoid this problem but no matter what I enter in the box for dash length, the box turns red and there's no change to the number of flat lines. I've tried whole numbers, decimal numbers (with and without a leading zero), a "-" symbol, the equal sign, random characters... heck, I even tried "short", "long", "curvy" and "squiggly" in a fit of frustration. Is this something that's just not working and I shouldn't be wasting time with it or what? I tried searching the forum and the user manual and didn't have any luck and don't have time to watch all the YT vids to see if it's addressed somewhere.

Hi MadScientist67

Welcome to the forums and thanks for the detailed question and screenshot.  The problem with PDF files is that they can represent the data however they like. As PDF it is a print format the data is represented with entities that print the correct content. However when it comes to extraction the way data such as contour lines and points are saved can make it incredibly difficult to extract.  In this case I believe each dash of the contour is not a line in the PDF but a 'hatch'.  Kubla Cubed extracts hatch areas as boundary outlines or closed contour as third party programs like Bluebeam Revu save areas as hatches rather than lines.  

Unfortunately it would be very difficult for us to read these as lines as each dash is actually represented by a region, they are not consistent areas either if you zoom in you can see they are not rectangles but have small spikes coming out.

   

We do have a plan on the roadmap to do edge detection which might offer a solution.  Edge detection algorithms would turn images into lines which we could then extract and try to join if the edge detection worked.  However that is a long term plan and would probably need quite a lot of tidy up.  In this case the solution is manual tracing in Kubla Cubed 2021 as vector extraction will not work.

In regard to the confusion over the options, we hear you on this.  We have simplified the confusing options in regard to 'dash' length to just a single slider in Kubla Cubed 2023 (due for release Q2 2023).  This way we can make more  bold assumptions to join lines behind the scenes based on where the users puts the slider, You will be able to tell visually the best setting before moving forward.  It will be a lot more 'easy to use' which is what Kubla Cubed is targeted at :