Create solid-appearing 3d models of a subsurface
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Hello everyone. I'm testing/trying out Sketchup Pro to see if it's right for our company's needs. We are in the upstream oil and gas industry--we wish to create solid-appearing 3d models of the subsurface. Primarily that means models of underground geological structure (= the way strata undulate and are faulted). For the most part these surfaces (the tops of a rock strata layer or a vertical fault) will all be non-coplanar. You have probably already guessed the more horizontal (layer) surfaces are not at all unlike topographic surfaces--just underground. These can't really be drawn freehand--they need to be the actual x-y-z surfaces we have interpreted from 3d seismic data. I can export these geologic surfaces from my interpretation/exploration software as flat ascii x-y-z data files and modify to hopefully be imported into Sketchup. From what I can see so far, the .dem file format might be the best bet, but (I hope) many of you know of other ways as well. Right now I don't even have a proper sample .dem text file to look at for comparison. Can you guys point me to similar discussions of this within your forum and/or give me advice.
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Woops I meant to reply here, James.
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Wow James, there's a throwback to an old tutorial I had long forgotten about! SU does work with dem files pretty well. But I have to admit, I know nothing about how you want to use them. Would you create like layers of topography essentially? Do they need to actually close and create closed volumes? Do you have any pictures of what this generally looks like? Thanks!
Chris
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Also meant to include this, another tutorial by a geology professor, as examples of what I'm trying to do.
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It does like the ppt attachment! It wasn't as good as the first anyway. You should get the idea.
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That graphic is great! I have a feeling you might be pioneering most of the methods you will use, but it seems like SU should be able to do most things you want.
How detailed does the TIN have to be? Is the surface made of mostly geometry or mostly image texture? SU does bulk at large poly counts. So one detailed TIN is painful. I can only imagine how rough 10 or 20 will be.
Chris
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Hi Gealagie (and welcome).
What I use for something similar visualization of (once) underground layers (just in archaeology - but the concept is the same) is Didier Bur's Cloud plugin which can import simple text files containing the x, y, z co-ordinates.
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Gealagie,
I encourage you to look into Gaieus's suggestion to use the Cloud_V6 plugin. It can take an x,y,z list (ASCII) of point coordinates, and import them into SketchUp, and 'skin' it with faces, as well.
I use it to import x,y,z data in the ".csv" spreadsheet file format, one of the formats the Cloud plugin recognizes.
I've used DEM and DXF in the past, for terrain surfaces, but now defer to Cloud (avoiding data file conversions.)
Taff
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Gealagie
Do you have a .dem file available for me to test, I cannot promise anything but I think I may have a crafty solution for you.
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Hello I'm back and wow thank you all for the suggestions (let me also say before I go on that I am astounded by the beautiful work you folks do!). Give me a while to poke around into these various solutions and I'll let you know how well each may fit for this use.
After I got away yesterday I began thinking that you guys would probably suggest some intermediate autocad step in the process. I had not mentioned I am trying to avoid that step as my company does not have any autocad-like app and no one would be trained on it. Plus I'm trying to demonstrate we can do this with a very small initial investment (like SU7Pro).
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Peter (Solo)-- I haven't really built a dem file of my actual data (surfaces) yet. I have only tried to play around with other, actual topographic dems just to see how they work and, importantly, whether I'll be able to reformat my own surface data into the dem format. I do have a columnar test text file I would be happy to show you (you will need to instruct me on how to send that to you).
Meanwhile I am trying to figure how to utilize this Cloud.rb app I have downloaded. All of this will take me awhile as I am like a novice hang-glider trying to pilot a jet fighter plane...
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Chris--Regarding the size of my TINs: they will probably be quite large if I were to directly convert the file outputs from my professional software (which would be regularly distributed points like a dem) into a dem format for import into SU. And I probably don't need nearly that many tessellations per surface to do the job. That will be one other thing to look into--an app that will allow me to convert the regularly-spaced surface data into coarser TINs. Or is that exactly what SU does when it imports a dem?
Not sure the modeling gods are with me today--I just returned to SU and found that my trial period of Pro has lapsed!
I fired it off again in what it said was the cut-down version, but this cut-down ver looks like it has all the functionality of Pro (at least all I have so-far explored). Now I'll have to detour to test that out... -
Gealagie,
Take a look at the free webvideo nr 48 and 49 from go-2-school: http://www.go-2-school.com/podcasts
Both deal with geological models with sketchup and also show how to import large amounts of spreadsheetsdata into sketchup using Didier Bur's "cloud'-ruby. I think it will be quite a revealing bit info for you.
If you dig a little bit into SketchUp you will find out that it has an unexpected depth (not geological spoken). SketchUp can be used in very many different ways, to express all kind of 3D-data in a very professional way. And that is anything but obvious looking at/using SketchUp for the first time. These SketchUcation Forums are the most professional place to find (and ask for) all kind of info. There is no other place where you can meet all those SU-pro's, exploring the deep borders of SketchUp, moving them further away bit by bit, sharing and discussing it with other pro's worldwide. There are many other websites and forums on SketchUp, but this is the one and only place to be, if you are looking for 'unusual' SU-solutions, as you are. -
Thank you, Ton. It is clear by the quality and diversity of graphics created with SU that it is indeed a powerful professional, and yet intuitively simple, tool.
To all, I've had some success today with the Cloud ruby (when do I learn why they are called "rubies"?). It greatly simplifies the loading from the output formats available to me. Many thanks for that tip. As Chris suggested, I may want to find an app that will re-triangulate/simplify the TIN surface into one with irregularly spaced nodes to more efficiently describe the surface. If anyone has ideas about that I would be most appreciative.
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@gealagie said:
...I may want to find an app that will re-triangulate/simplify the TIN surface into one with irregularly spaced nodes to more efficiently describe the surface. If anyone has ideas....
This summer, there was much discussion about simplifying/regularizing terrain TINs, eventually leading to a plugin (written in the "ruby" programming language, by the way.)
The discussions demonstrate the collaborative "think tank" environment we enjoy here in the Community Forums:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11164
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=11320(You can download the "terrain reshaper" plugin, in the first post of the second discussion - Thanks to Didier!)
Taff
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Fairly good explanation of DEM file format here:
http://www.ems-i.com/wmshelp/Files/File_Formats/DEM_Files.htm
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Thank you Taff. I just downloaded the terrain_reshaper and I'll look at it this morning.
Reading through the posts, it sounds like the script makes an irregular TIN surface more regular. My imports using Cloud have produced perfectly regular TINs (as the output from my source is an even grid of xyz points), with broad relatively planar areas that shouldn't require so many triangles to describe the geometry. I am looking for a program that will join the mesh into larger triangles in the planar areas and perhaps tighten the mesh in areas of high curvature. Does this ruby by Didier do that?
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Thank you mleptuk, but it looks like importing my xyz files with the Cloud script is the way I'll go. That was key, everyone. Thanks again for pointing to it--and for putting up with a noodlin' novice like me.
"I've looked at clouds from both sides now. From up and down and still somehow. It's cloud's illusions I recall..." --Judy Collins
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The cloud.rb is great for xyz coordinates like you have. But the native .dem importer allows you to specify how detailed you want your terrain to be imported. So if there was a way to convert one of your files to .dem to test, that might be worth testing. Just to see if the ability to control the amount of detail is useful.
Chris
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@gealagie said:
I am looking for a program that will join the mesh into larger triangles in the planar areas and perhaps tighten the mesh in areas of high curvature.
On "flat" areas the edges of the tin are coplanar. Have a look at deletecoplanaredges.rb or [CASF]DelCopEdges.rb in Didier's Ruby Library Depot ; they will erase every edge that is not needed to create the mesh (sometimes they erase even more however
).
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