topography

I would like to know the best way to import topography from contour lines in .shp format. Can I do that?

I think FEFLOW could not directly handle contout lines. I do that mostly in the following way:
- create in ArcView or ArcGis a Surface TIN from the contourlines
- export the FEFLOW nodes as points (shapefile) and load them in the GIS
-  extract the elevation from the surface TIN at the points and add them to the shapefile
- import this to FEFLOW
This is a little bit amfward, but it works.

Thank you very much! I'll try that. If anyone knows another way to import topography, please tell me.

There are also extensions for ArcGIS to divide lines into points with a fixed distance. The elevations could then be derived by a spatial join. This could avoid the TIN, wich might require a 3D Analyst / Spatial Analyst license.

OK! The problem was the coordinate system.