[GRASS-user] v.to.rast gives empty raster layer

[Hanlie Pretorius]

Hi,

I'm working in GRASS 6.4.1 on Windows XP.

I want to use r.surf.contour to convert contour lines into a DEM.
However, I first need to convert my vector contour lines into raster
contour lines. My region is set to the contours_20m vector layer, with
a 20m resolution.

v.to.rast --overwrite input=contours_20m output=contours_20m use=attr
column=HEIGHT
Loading data...
Reading features...
Writing raster map...
Converted areas: 0 of 0
Converted points/lines: 1593 of 1593
v.to.rast complete.

r.info for the result is:
 | Layer:    contours_20m at CDNGI_DEM         Date: Mon May 02 14:18:00 2011
 | Mapset:   CDNGI_DEM                      Login of Creator: hanlie
 | Location: SA_Lo_29E
 | DataBase: F:\grassdata
 | Title:    Labels ( contours_20m at CDNGI_DEM )
 | Timestamp: none
 |----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 |
 |   Type of Map:  raster               Number of Categories: 0
 |   Data Type:    DCELL
 |   Rows:         1772
 |   Columns:      1750
 |   Total Cells:  3101000
 |        Projection: Transverse Mercator
 |            N: -3121229.69982072    S: -3156672.30728643   Res: 20.00147148
 |            E: -32474.90929218    W: -67483.27873573   Res: 20.00478254
 |   Range of data:    min = 1620  max = 2460

 |   Data Source:
 |    Vector Map: contours_20m at CDNGI_DEM in mapset CDNGI_DEM
 |    Original scale from vector map: 1:1
 |
 |   Data Description:
 |    generated by v.to.rast
 |
 |   Comments:
 |    v.to.rast input="contours_20m at CDNGI_DEM" layer=1 type="point,line,ar\
 |    ea" output="contours_20m at CDNGI_DEM" use="attr" column="HEIGHT" value\
 |    =1 rows=4096

As you can see from the number of categories (0), there is no
information in this raster file.

Can someone perhaps help me figure out why this happens?

Thanks
Hanlie