Find the wet spots costing you yield — and design the fix yourself, before you pay anyone per acre.
See where water sits on your own ground, then design the fix yourself — surface drainage, tile, and your own 3D landforming. That's Geo-Surface Pro: the full design suite, all in your browser. One flat membership covers every field you farm with no per-acre fee, and elevation's built in, so you're not paying for a survey just to plan.
- Surface drainage
- Tile
- 3D landforming
- Unlimited acres
Design and quote from built-in LiDAR — no boots in the field. RTK surveys and grades once you green-light the job.
The opportunity
Every wet acre is a bill you pay at harvest. Now you can design the fix yourself.
The corner that drowns out, the soft headland, the seep line that keeps you off the field until June — those acres yield well below the rest, season after season. The problem was never knowing they were there. It was getting to a credible plan without hiring it out or paying by the acre just to find out if a fix was worth it.
Planning meant hiring out — or paying per acre.
To get past a hunch, you called a consultant or a contractor and waited. Many tools and services bill by the acre, so even a quick look at one quarter section ran into real money before a shovel moved.
- Per-acre fees (tools like OptiSurface run ~$9.90/ac)
- $30–120/ac for a drone-LiDAR flight just to start
- Wait on someone else's schedule for a first look
Now you design it yourself, on your own ground.
Geo-Surface Pro puts the whole planning-and-design stage in your hands: read the water, then design the surface, tile, or 3D landforming fix and see the scope — before anyone surveys or commits a machine. One flat membership, every field you farm.
- Flat membership — unlimited fields and acres
- No per-acre fees, ever
- Elevation built in — no survey just to plan
$0
To start looking. The free Viewer and Tile Calculator cost nothing — explore any field before you decide.
$499/yr
Design it all yourself. Geo-Surface Pro covers surface, tile, AND 3D landforming for every field you farm — $499/yr. No per-acre fee, ever.
~$1,584
One 160-acre landforming design, billed per acre. At ~$9.90/ac that's more than three years of Geo-Surface Pro ($499/yr) — for a single field.
Geo-Surface Pro is the planning and design stage. Survey and grade with RTK after the design gets the go-ahead — for landforming, the exported machine file carries calibration benchmarks so you tie into real ground before you grade.
Try it on your own wet acres — if it doesn't earn its keep, the 30-day money-back guarantee has you covered. Get Pro — US$499/yr Try the live demo — no signup
Start with the water
Read the water, then lay out the fix — right in your browser.
It all starts with seeing the problem. Geo-Surface Pro ($499/yr) finds the wet areas, then lets you design surface drainage and targeted tile, grade it to depth, and print a report you can act on or hand a contractor. Ready to reshape the field? Your own 3D landforming is the next step — same tool, same membership.
Find what's wet — ponding, wetness, and flow
Drop simulated rainfall and watch where it pools, see which ground stays chronically saturated, and trace the paths water actually takes off the field. You already know the bad corners — now you have a map and numbers to act on.
- Ponding predictor ranks depressions by depth and flooded area
- Wetness potential (TWI) finds the slow, chronic soft spots
- Flow paths show where the water wants to go
Design surface drainage and targeted tile
Lay out ditches and waterways that follow the field's real fall, then run tile mains and laterals only where the water is — with automatic and stepped pipe sizing handled for you. Spend tile where it actually pays instead of blanketing acres that drain fine.
- Surface drainage: ditches, waterways, flow-path routing
- Tile mains & laterals with automatic / stepped pipe sizing
- Target only the acres that need it — no per-acre fee either way
Grade it to depth, then check the profile
A best-fit grade gives every line a workable, continuous fall, and the profile chart shows depth along the run — so you catch a too-shallow stretch or a depth violation on screen, long before anyone's in the ground.
- Best-fit grade / profile design for each line
- Depth-violation flags so nothing runs too shallow
- See the whole run as a profile, not a guess
Client-ready reports
Print a clean PDF of the plan — layout, sizes, depths and grades — to keep on file or hand to whoever does the work.
Exports you can use
Send out DXF (CAD layout / centerlines), shapefile, KML, or OptiSurface so the field plan travels with the job.
Elevation built in
High-resolution elevation (US 3DEP, Canada HRDEM) loads with each field — no drone flight or survey just to plan. Upload your own GeoTIFF if you have it.
Everything above runs on one flat membership — unlimited fields, no per-acre fees, ever. Get Pro — US$499/yr Try the live demo — no signup
Do your own 3D landforming
Design your own 3D landforming — and quit paying a fee for every acre.
This is the part farmers used to hand off and pay for by the acre, one field at a time. Not anymore. Geo-Surface Pro does 3D landforming right in your browser: pick where water should leave (the boundary edges you allow), set how deep you'll cut, and let it grade the field — for one flat membership, on every field you farm. It does one job and does it well: fill the low spots and get every acre shedding to those edges. That's drainage-first grading — not a full-blown earthwork optimizer — and for most fields, getting the water off is the whole point.
Pick your outlets, set a max cut, hit Solve.
Mark where you want water to leave the field, set how deep you're willing to cut, and let the solver do the rest. Every acre sheds to your outlets with no ponding left — and it moves as little dirt as possible: fill for the low spots is borrowed from nearby high ground instead of skimming the whole field, so most of the ground stays untouched. Less fuel, less time, less topsoil disturbed.
- Every acre sheds to the outlets you chose — no ponding left behind, verified on the finished surface
- Fill borrowed from nearby high ground: most of the field left untouched, each borrow area numbered on the report
- Honest audited volumes in yd³ and m³ — if your max cut leaves a real shortfall, the app says so and recommends what to change
- Several ways to source dirt: whole-field pass, least-disturbance borrow, balanced borrow, a shallow skim, or topsoil strip & return
Soil-based suggestions
Pull in soil data for your ground and get suggested tile spacing, depth, and drainage coefficient — cited to NRCS, ASAE, the Iowa Drainage Guide, and OMAFRA, not pulled from thin air.
Know the dirt before you move it
A haul-distance breakdown and a borrow plan show how far the dirt travels and where it comes from, so you can judge the job before a scraper ever rolls.
Export to Ditch Assist
The finished design leaves as a Ditch Assist AGD file with the calibration benchmarks you placed on the map — plus AGPS points, CSV grid, or DXF for any other workflow.
Ask for help while the field is open
The built-in 24/7 AI assistant can explain a tool, warning, or next step. If you allow project context, it uses a privacy-filtered summary — not your field coordinates, raw geometry, elevation raster, uploads, file names, branding, or costs.
Pick your outlets, set a max cut, and see your own field's numbers — on one flat membership. Get Pro — US$499/yr Try the live demo — no signup
What's in the toolbox
One membership. Every tool you need to design it yourself.
No tiers to weigh, no add-ons to buy. Surface drainage, tile, and 3D landforming all live in Geo-Surface Pro — here's what you get the day you start.
Auto pipe sizing
Tile mains and laterals sized for you by Manning's, from contributing area, grade, and drainage coefficient. No guessing diameters.
Profile charts
A best-fit grade for every line plus a profile chart showing depth along the run, so nothing's too shallow before you dig.
Soil-based spacing
SSURGO and SoilGrids soil data with suggested spacing, depth, and coefficient — cited to NRCS, ASAE, Iowa, and OMAFRA.
Before & after ponding
Burn your drains into the ground and re-run the water analysis to see how the field behaves after the fix, not just before.
3D view under the field
See the tile network underground at its designed grade in a 3D terrain view — vertical exaggeration and all.
3D landforming solve
Grade your own field to drain — the part you used to pay for by the acre. Every acre sheds out, minimal dirt moved, honest audited volumes.
Client-ready PDF report
A clean report with the layout, sizes, depths, grades, earthwork, and profile charts to keep on file or hand over.
Machine-ready files out
Landforming machine files: Ditch Assist AGD with benchmarks, AGS, CSV, TXT · CAD/GIS exports: dual-surface DXF, shapefile, KML · or just hand over the plan and PDF. No grade control? The report and quantities are the deliverable.
One membership, $499/yr.
Surface, tile, and 3D landforming, every field you farm, no per-acre fee — less than a per-acre design fee on a single quarter section.
30-day money-back guarantee
Even on the big jobs
Walk into the contractor conversation already knowing the field.
Some jobs are too big or too complex to do alone — and you shouldn't. But you don't have to walk in blind, either. Design the field first and you'll have your own plan — layout, footage, pipe sizes — to check the contractor's quote against, line by line. You'll know whether the fix is even viable and roughly what it should take before you ask for a price. On the big jobs your contractor still surveys with RTK and installs to grade — you just deal from knowledge instead of taking their word for it.
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Judge viability before you spend
See where water sits and whether drainage will actually respond — so you don't pour money into acres that won't pay back.
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Compare scope before you spend
Know the rough layout, footage, and pipe sizes going in, so pricing is easier to compare.
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Get on the same page, faster
Hand over a plan and a report so the contractor quotes the field you actually have — fewer surprises, less back-and-forth. Works the other way too: if your contractor or agronomist designs in Geo-Surface Pro, they can send you the project file and you open the whole thing — drain runs, grades, and the water analysis — in the free Viewer, no account and no cost.
Landforming on the table? Know the economics too: even one landforming design billed by the acre would cover years of Geo-Surface Pro — and Pro keeps designing every field after that, with no per-acre fee.
Build your own plan before the next contractor conversation — one flat membership covers every field. Get Pro — US$499/yr Try the live demo — no signup
When you build it
Plan it yourself. Grade your own field with Ditch Assist.
Geo-Surface Pro gets you a credible plan and a confident go/no-go — the cheap, low-risk part. Once you commit, how the design reaches the field depends on the work: a drainage job gets surveyed with RTK and built straight to your plan; a landforming design travels as a machine-ready file that ties into real ground before anything's graded. If you run Ditch Assist, that landforming handoff is a straight one — same team builds both (GIS4AG), so they're made to fit together.
Plan & quote
Read the water and lay out the fix, or design the 3D landforming surface, from built-in elevation — no survey just to plan. Decide if it's worth doing.
Verify the ground
Draining the field: an RTK survey verifies the actual ground before install. Reshaping it: export the design with the calibration benchmarks you placed on the map, so it ties into real ground on site.
Build to grade
Tie in on your RTK point or your exported benchmark, then grade to the plan. Run Ditch Assist? It's a direct handoff. Don't run grade control at all? The plan, quantities, and PDF report are still what the contractor works from.
From GIS4AG — who also make Ditch AssistPlan the field yourself first — grading and RTK survey come after you commit. Get Pro — US$499/yr Try the live demo — no signup
Not just your own ground?
Designing for others, or working a different job?
Geo-Surface fits more than the farmer planning their own fields. Here's where to go next.
Plan for clients?
For ag consultants
Use elevation data you already collect to deliver surface and tile plans clients can act on.
Consultants pageInstall for a living?
For tile & surface contractors
Create a first-pass drainage or landforming plan with quantities before you commit survey time.
Contractors pageJust running the numbers?
Free calculators
Tile spacing, drainage ROI, flow capacity, and grade — free, no login, to size up a field before you commit.
Try the free calculatorsPricing for your own ground
One flat membership. Every field you farm.
Start free, then design surface, tile, and 3D landforming yourself with Geo-Surface Pro — US$499/yr, everything included: unlimited fields, unlimited acres, no per-acre fees.
Free
Geo-Surface Viewer
To explore your fields — no login.
Free forever. No card.
- Fetch and view high-resolution LiDAR elevation for any field
- Contour overlay on US fields, plus a 3D view of the ground
- Open and explore plans others share with you
- Free calculators: tile spacing, ROI, flow, grade
Geo-Surface Pro
The full design suite
Surface, tile & 3D landforming — all in your browser.
Billed annually · launch price until September 1, 2026
- All three, unlimited acres, no per-acre fees:
- Find wet spots: ponding, wetness, flow paths
- Surface & tile design with automatic & stepped pipe sizing
- 3D landforming: reshape the field so every acre sheds to your outlets — no ponding left
- Grade / profile design with depth checks
- Soil-based spacing suggestions + before/after ponding
- Landforming machine files: Ditch Assist AGD with benchmarks, AGS, CSV, TXT · CAD/GIS exports: dual-surface DXF, shapefile, KML · or just hand over the plan and PDF
- Client-ready PDF reports + 3D view of the tile underground
30-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. If it doesn't earn its keep, you get your money back.
One annual membership at US$499/yr. From September 1, 2026 new signups pay US$799/yr — join before then and $499/yr stays your renewal price. No long-term contract, and no extra charge for the built-in elevation data.
Questions, answered
Straight answers before you spend a dollar.
No jargon, no fine-print games. Here's what farmers ask most.
Can I design my own tile drainage?
Yes — that's exactly what Geo-Surface Pro is for. Outline your field and it fetches the elevation, finds your wet spots, and lets you lay out tile mains and laterals with automatic and stepped pipe sizing, a best-fit grade, and depth checks along every run. DIY farm drainage design in a browser: if you can outline a field on a map, you can design its tile.
Can I really do my own landforming, or just drainage?
Both — 3D landforming runs right in the browser alongside surface and tile design. Here's the honest scope: it fills the low areas and grades the field so every acre sheds to the boundary edges you allow. You choose those edges and how deep you'll cut, then let it solve; it borrows fill from nearby high ground so most of the field stays untouched, and it reports honest cut/fill volumes. Three design models to try — whole-field blade pass with nearby borrow, least-disturbance, or balanced — plus shallow planing and a topsoil strip & return workflow.
It's drainage-first grading — DIY landforming design that gets the water off — not a full-blown earthwork optimizer. For most fields that's the whole point, and it's the part you used to pay a consultant for by the acre.
Do I need GIS or CAD skills to use this?
No. If you can outline a field on a map, you can use Geo-Surface Pro. It runs in your browser, the heavy data processing happens automatically behind the scenes, and the maps look like your fields — no CAD, no GIS, nothing to install or learn.
How much does landforming design cost per acre — and how does a membership compare?
Per-acre landforming tools run around ~$9.90/ac, so a single 160-acre quarter section runs well over a thousand dollars — for that one field. Geo-Surface Pro is a flat $499/year for unlimited fields and unlimited acres, with no per-acre fees at all. One field's per-acre design fee can cost more than a couple of years of Pro, and Pro keeps designing every field on the farm after that. That flat-membership math is the whole DIY landforming design pitch.
Do I still need a survey?
Not to plan. High-resolution elevation is built into Geo-Surface Pro and loads with each field, so you can find your wet spots and design a fix with zero upfront survey cost — no drone flight at $30–120/ac just to start.
Plan from the kitchen table; survey when you commit the dirt. On a drainage job, an RTK survey verifies the actual ground before install. For landforming, the exported machine file carries the calibration benchmarks you placed on the map, so the equipment ties into real ground before anything is graded — either way, that's how the dirt gets moved accurately.
What do I need to use Ditch Assist designs?
Geo-Surface Pro exports your landforming design as a Ditch Assist AGD file — existing and proposed surfaces, the field boundary, and the calibration benchmarks you placed on the map. Load it on a field running Ditch Assist, tie into the benchmarks, and grade. GIS4AG builds both, so they're made to work together.
No Ditch Assist? You're not stuck. The same design also exports as AGPS points (AGS), a CSV grid, generic TXT, or DXF for other grading workflows — and if you don't run grade control at all, the plan, quantities, and PDF report are still a deliverable a contractor can work from.
Does it cover my area?
Geo-Surface Pro works anywhere covered by US 3DEP (United States) and Canada's HRDEM elevation programs, which together blanket most active farmland. The fastest way to check is to launch the free Viewer and draw a boundary on your own field.
Will this replace my drainage contractor?
No — it makes you a better-informed customer. Geo-Surface Pro is the planning and design layer: it helps you find the problem, design the fix, and read a quote with your own plan in hand. On bigger jobs your contractor still surveys with RTK and installs to grade. You both end up on the same page, faster.
What does it cost, and what if it's not for me?
Geo-Surface Pro is a flat $499/year — one membership, unlimited fields and acres, no per-acre charges and no charge for the built-in elevation data. There's no long-term contract, and signing up locks in $499/yr as your renewal price for as long as your membership stays active.
Want to look first? The Viewer and the calculators are free forever. And every paid plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee — if it doesn't earn its keep, you get your money back.