Garden Design - Easy Method To Create Terrain

Calstock

Hi Guys,

Firstly let me say what a fantastic place Sketchucation is, what a brilliant plugin manager you provide and superb free resources you make available, (that should get me in the good books!).

What I'd like help with is the task of creating sloping terrains within domestic gardens, (lawns essentially - although it could be other garden areas). I used to be a Site Engineer many years ago and am familiar with Total Stations, (fancy theodolites for those not in our industry), that can output all the data required to map / survey a piece of ground. I'm also aware that there are plugins that let you use that data to create cloud fields which can then be turned into triangulated surfaces that represent the terrain.

The fact of the matter is though that most Landscapers and Garden Designers have much more low-tech tools available when carrying out garden surveys. I think the best we can hope to do is a level survey on a grid pattern using tools like rotary lasers or optical levels, (known as dumpy levels quite often). What I'd like to do is to find the quickest way to turn that information into a modeled terrain of the garden.

At the moment I'm using some excellent plugins from Matt66 and Tig, (and maybe others), to do this procedure:

Use "Grid" to layout a grid of typically 2-5m spacing over a Sketchup plan of the area.

2.Use "Point" to add construction points at the required height above each grid point.

Use "Triangulate Points" to do just that.
Use soften to form a realistic interpretation of the existing ground levels.

The problems being "Point" creates 2 points at each instance, (one on the grid / origin point and one at the required "height" point). When you come to triangulate the points to make the terrain, it's not that easy to make sure you're only selecting the points you want to select, rather than all the secondary origin points.

Question 1 - Is there a way of just creating a single construction point above an origin point by selecting the origin, (somehow) and typing in the height, (distance on the blue axis) ?

Question 2 - Do you think I'm using the right method & plugins ?

Thanks, Gary.

sketchymick

Why not create an xyz file in excel or similar: 3 columns for X, Y and Z coordinates describing your grid (which doesn't have to be uniform), then use a plugin to import the points and triangulate - you only get one set of points that way. I seem to remember the plugin might have been something like 'cloud' or 'points cloud' and there was a version that TIG had which did the same thing which I think is called TIG_points_cloud_triangulation.rb
Cheers

Mick

Calstock

I'll look into that possibility - thanks.

After further playing around with this task I've found it's far better to create a solid out of the data rather than just an undulating surface. The reason being it's so much easier to then use the solid tools to eat away at sections of the garden to install paved areas, retaining walls, ponds, etc. Making a solid still involves using my original method but then attaching the surface to a similar shaped, (flat), surface below using a series of vertical lines around the perimeter.