Quick tutorial for road design on a terrain

charly2008 · 8 Jun 2009, 16:33

Summary:

Up till now I have not found any satisfactory possibility for the construction of roads in Sketchup. Road design within Geocontrol is done simply and shows satisfactory results. The Terrain was exported as an .obj file and changed to an 3ds file which is Sketchup able to import. To have good view of the road in the triangulated terrain in Sketchup it is neccessary to import it as a high resolution terrain.

The biggest size which Sketchup was able to load is the terrain shown below. The difficulty is that the road doesn't have a sharp borderline as shown in Geocontrol.

I'm not shure if it is possible to create smooth borderlines because for the road also we have only triangles.

I will devote again myself to other more pleasant work. May be in the future somebody has a brainwave.

Karlheinz

solo · 8 Jun 2009, 16:57

Karl

That looks great, good work.

Is this for a particular project/client? is the road asphalt/concrete? and i assume you would need stone barriers too right?

I would suggest making the road using a profile in GC, extracting the vector road seperate and the profile seperate, taking them into Vue and exporting them seperately then overlaying them as components in SU that way you will have clear control over them. However it will probably cripple you unless you work with strict layering (but that may not be enough once you start texturing)
Or, work the entire project in Vue or GC.

charly2008 · 8 Jun 2009, 17:41

Hi Pete,

it is not a particulare project it is only for fun. I try to find only a comfortable workflow for road design that can be used within Sketchup. With GC i did only some first steps. I don't know how to make a profile in GC and to export them separately. Up till now I have exported only an obj file from GC. In the use of Vue i'm also a beginner. It seems to me that you have some experience with GC. Your method sounds promising but I comprehend not yet completely the steps. Perhaps I can soothe my frustration again. Would you be so kind to give me a rough description of the steps within GC.

Karlheinz

solo · 8 Jun 2009, 21:01

Actually Karl, Pilou may be onto something here, the 'tools on surface' ruby will be good to trace the shape of the road in SU and from there you can pull up the barriers as needed, will be a lot easier than my idea above.

Gaieus · 8 Jun 2009, 21:05

What I'd do here is to soften the whole terrain first and then drape the road lines in their place. It wouldn't add further geometry but simply unsoften the two sides of the oad.

Now from then on, you can use TOS to offset and Joint PushPull to erect side barriers, copy along path to distribute road side posts or what you call them or anything for a road.

charly2008 · 8 Jun 2009, 21:45

Pete, Csaba, Pilou,

please can you show me an example how you would do this on the Test Road.skp above.

Karlheinz

Gaieus · 8 Jun 2009, 22:16

For that, I'd need the mesh as it is now AND the road that you integrated in that other app (which I don't know) separately imported into SU.

Can you rip the road only, somehow like Pete suggested above? It would be a long, thin strip this way.

pilou · 9 Jun 2009, 09:49

In theory you can draw your road with "Tools on surface" by Fredo6 on top view
Just hide or separate some useless reliefs around the road for have a speedy calculate

charly2008 · 9 Jun 2009, 11:05

Hi Csaba,

the road was generated with Geocontrol (GC). The workflow is as follows:

Generation of a terrain
Drawing the road direction by a Vector tool on a 2D height shaded view
Road will be generated by GC automatically
Export terrain as a Wavefront object (.obj).
Changing the obj file into a 3ds file using Vue or Cinema 4D
Import of the triangulated mesh (3DS file) into Sketchup.

At present i can't see any way to separate the terrain mesh from the Vector road. It is exported as one triangulated mesh.

Karlheinz

Gaieus · 9 Jun 2009, 16:27

Hm. I see. Too bad actually. The other option would be to soften the whole surface, turn on hidden geometry and unsoften the bordering edges of the road manually (Shift+Ctrl+Eraser tool) but certainly that's a whole lot of tedious,manual work although can be done at the weekends while one's wife is knitting beside)

charly2008 · 11 Jun 2009, 15:20

Hi csaba,

i agree with you, but i'm a Lazy dog.

Karlheinz

abuyaas · 18 Jun 2009, 12:00

thanks man ı am sorry for may poorıng english

Macker · 25 Aug 2009, 09:46

Just dragging this topic up again.

Being unfamilliar with the "follow me & keep" tool, could someone please explain how to use it? I get absolutely nonsense results when I use it.

charly2008 · 25 Aug 2009, 11:12

Hi Macker,

create a line and the end a Profile, in this case a rectangle. Select the lines including the rectangle and choose follow me and keep.

Karlheinz

Followme and keep.skp

majid · 23 Jan 2010, 01:20

dear mate, I was not deeply contribute in this tut, but now I take a look and see that there is a gpa this between taht makes me not to understand it: After unfolding the road sextion, "how do y make it curvy again?" plz

charly2008 · 23 Jan 2010, 13:24

Hi Majid,

for shape bender, you need the road direction line from the first step. This i forget to mention.
Sorry that i answered a little late.

Karlheinz