Modelling sites for an urban designer

icedkasz · 8 Dec 2012, 01:25

I'm modelling a very large site for an Urban Designer. I'm taking his AutoCAD drawings, and combining them with a 3D CAD survey file. The roads and land don't line up, of course. I cut the road shapes out of the terrain, leaving room to draw the roads exactly how I want them.
Now I'm wondering about the best way to handle stitching everything together. I'm fairly experienced with sketchup, but my grade modelling techniques are piss poor at best. Can anyone give me some tips, or (optimally) point me in the direction of some relevant tutorials? The ones I find online are always very simplistic (here's how this tool works! Moving on...)

Chris Fullmer · 8 Dec 2012, 02:42

Is that the only portion to do, or is this just a tiny piece of a massive model?

I'm thinking you could use a plugin to connect the edges, but the way my mind is thinking it through, it would sort of have to stretch my stretch. I think you could get it done in a relatively quick time once you get it sorted out.

One thought, the center median area in a modern city would probably be leveled and flattened to match the grade of the road. So you could delete that slope-y median and replace it with a flat terrain. Then you've got that whole piece done!

Chris Fullmer · 8 Dec 2012, 02:45

Oh, another thought is that if the terrain is too high right next to the road, so connecting it directly edge to edge might virtually make a straight wall...I would turn on hidden geometry and go through and delete the geometry on the terrain immediately next to the road, just make a big gap between the terrain and road. Then I would hand stitch it back together - draw the triangles from the terrain to the road until the gap is all cleaned up.

pbacot · 8 Dec 2012, 08:00

If you want a little more in a video, there's always this: https://sites.google.com/site/3dbasecamp2008/all-sessions-2008/working-with-terrain-and-other-irregular-surfaces

I'm a broken record, it seems...

But what you've done looks familiar. It's a tough one. When the terrain is close to what you want you can move vertices to match along the edges. Vertex tools helps, but you can also use the move tool.

icedkasz · 11 Dec 2012, 05:18

Thanks for the tips. I was worried I'd be manually stitching it together. If that's how it's gotta be, I just need to get down to it.

this isn't the only part. For the near future, I'll be doing 3 times as much as this, with multiple road variations in the same model. Which simply means, I need to be organized.

In the further future, I have about 30 times this amount of roadway to get to. In that situation, it might be best for me to use the sandbox tools.

pbacot · 11 Dec 2012, 18:41

Look up Valiarchitects Instant Road and other tools by them--might help.

icedkasz · 12 Dec 2012, 06:54

So, I cleaned up the sidewalks and island of grass. Took a while, but looks good. I used the follow me tool to trace a curb along the already modelled road (What a glitchy tool...), then just drew lines outwards from the top of the curb, to create the sidewalk. Intersected Face with Model to determine where to clean up the edges of the sidewalk (the existing buildings determined the cutoff), and that was enough. For the island, I installed that Soap Skin ruby, which saved me a lot of hassle.
I've got that Instant Road ruby installed now, will see how well it works tomorrow. It might help a lot tomorrow morning.

So, overall it took me a while. Does anyone know of any videos online, showing the workflow of accomplished sketchup modellers? I'd love to see some ways to speed things up. I like the sandbox tools, but not all the time. I often end up just making a mess.

pbacot · 12 Dec 2012, 16:50

" I used the follow me tool to trace a curb along the already modelled road (What a glitchy tool...),"

In regard to the "follow me", It works pretty much as advertised, though that is limited. Some of the things it does are just the basic SU limitations or features that you see in other tools. Try the "Follow me and keep" plugin if you find you are getting twisted shapes.

Looks like a good job. Thanks for sharing the result. I actually like the SU image. If you stuck with minimal muddy colors and a grunge look, perhaps used a crayon line, might work on its own. Or check out Dave Richards pencil styles.

As for videos (books etc.) have you checked out Daniel Tal (as posted above)?

Chris Fullmer · 13 Dec 2012, 03:24

Ya know, you could also delete the edges of the terrain out like you did and instead of hand stitching, use the "from contours" to automatically re-stitch the terrain and the road. I would guess you would want to take the outline of the terrain edge and the outline of the road and isolate them into their own group to help keep your new terrain mesh free of other meshes while working on it. Then merge it all back together once you get it cleaned up.

That might help speed it up a little?

icedkasz · 20 Dec 2012, 06:03

Thanks for keeping up with the video suggestion, Pbacot. I ended up going back to it, and was really impressed with the way the guy showed real world applications of the tools (as opposed to a single tool tutorial). I'm not a fan of most sketchup tutorials. This was excellent.

I tried out Instant Roads, and found mixed success.
Now that I'm reading your comment again, Chris, I'm wondering if I could have sped up my process by using your suggestions. Ah, well. Picture linked below, showing my latest challenges. Hopefully you can lend a hand...

As a side note, I officially hate photobucket. Reducing image size automatically? Really?

pbacot · 20 Dec 2012, 06:27

Your sequence reminds me of this post.

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=40331&start=15#p393786

I haven't tried it. You might find the whole thread interesting.

It looks like you got instant Terrain plugin too?