Landscape design and terrain
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I am very new to sketchup with just a basic understanding of the program. I run a landscape company and need to start doing more design work. I can create models with houses and decks but I am a little confused on how to create the terrain around the house so I can place plants on it. I and trying to work with the sandbox to create the ground but cannot get it to come together. Point me in the right direction with some tutorials or something.
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Welcome to SCF, Grant! These should get you started
YouTube - The Sketchup Show #13: The Sandbox Tools (Pt.1)
[flash=480,385:bpbvwtci]http://www.youtube.com/v/CcbIZFn6-mQ?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:bpbvwtci]
YouTube - The Sketchup Show #13: The Sandbox Tools (Pt.2)
[flash=480,385:bpbvwtci]http://www.youtube.com/v/PwHdSVqUCac?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:bpbvwtci] -
Watch this. Tal wrote a book too.
Check out all the BaseCamp 2008 videos.
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This has been much help so far. How about best practices to place plants where to start and how to get it on the created terrain.
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You may be interested in the Component Spray plugin for placing plants:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=33908 -
Another more measured approach might be to use the Drop.rb Ruby script. Given that you may well start your design by stamping a 2D layout of beds, paths etc onto your 3D topography. You could position your plants and other features on a duplicate of the 2D plan...also hovering in position above the topo. That done, you can simply remove the 2D plane, select all the items and then, from the r-click context menu, choose Drop at Intersection; at which point everything will drop vertically until it collides with the topo...at whatever height it happens to be at that point.
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i cannot get the drop at intersection plugin to show up in the plugins folder. whats wrong?
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It's in the context menu of selected groups/components. Select something > right click > and choose the plugin from there.
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You can get pretty far with the sand box tool. Once you get the hang of it, check out thomthom's vertex plug in for fine editing.
If you have the grading plan it is pretty quick to create terrain from contours.
Check out spray component plugin to apply plants.
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