CGAL users discussion list

Hello all members and experts !

First of all I'd like to thank you for the wonderful work made in CGAL.
I'm a new user and your API seem to be very powerfull! I've just started to 
discover 3D and I want to try your API right now!

I watched to your docs, examples and posts but I'm not sure to have all 
understood...So please, I'd like a little help and orientation...

I have a file with terrain points in x, y, z like notice below :
X1 Y1 Z1
.  .  .
Xn Yn Zn

I'd like to build a surface mesh to navigate in this terrain in 3D.

1) For that, I've seen the terrain.cpp file which seems to be interesting 
isn't ?
But why does it use Delaunay_triangulation_2 and not a 
Delaunay_triangulation_3 ?
The order of the points in the file are important, aren't they?
In whitch order do I have to put my points?

2) If my terrain has mountains and lakes, and I want to simplify the mesh. 
Lakes have the same altitude so 
it isn't necessary to create a lot of triangle at these places.
Does your triangulation automatically consider this ? If not, which example 
do that?

3) Another question is if I want to simplify my mesh. That is to say if I 
want to have less triangles
on my mesh, can I use Triangulated Surface Mesh Simplification by Fernando 
Cacciola ? or is there a better code example?

In advance, thank you a lot !

Long life to CGAL! :)

Tyv