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    Terrain and Landscaping Tutorial

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    • T Offline
      toxic
      last edited by

      Hello everyone

      I have been around for a long time and not able to create ruby which I take advantage of and thought I would try and give something back.

      Terrain on Sketchup can be very difficult to achieve accurate results but this is the best way I have managed to do it, that suits planners and clients.

      1. Cad drawings need to be exploded on a normal survey you will have points e.g
        +93.43
        because this is text Sketchup will not import so exploding these will import into sketchup.

      2. (Image 1) Click File Import select DWG (Sketchup 7 Pro only) click options make sure its set the the correct scale in my case its metric MM click OK you have imported the DWG.
        Image 1 Import DWG

      3. (Image 2) Select the line tool and in the centre of the crosses click to draw a vertical line on the blue axis normally the values are shown as my survey +93.84 ignore the first number and add a 0 to the end so 93.84 becomes 3840 (metric) this will give you the correct levels around the site.
        Image 2 Start to Draw the vertical lines

      4. (Image 3) shows the whole site with vertical lines
        Image 3 Completed Lines

      5. (Image 4) Start to draw lines around the tops of the vertical lines creating the skeleton for the mesh
        Image 4 Start to connect the vertical lines

      6. (Image 5) Once you have completed select all the lines and press the From Contours button from the sandbox tools, shown by the circle and arrow you may have to enable sandbox from Sketchup's advanced features.
        Image 5 Select the completed lines and click from contours

      7. (image 6) you have a completed accurate landscape (as long as the land surveyors did there job properly 😉
        Image 6 Completed Mesh

      Thats it I hope this is of help to some people.

      Best Wishes
      Andy

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      • T Offline
        tomislavm
        last edited by

        Thank You,innovative!

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        • Chris FullmerC Offline
          Chris Fullmer
          last edited by

          And perhaps a quick shortcut is that at step 3, if you just select those lines and then run "From Contours" on them, it will make a terrain from them. So you probably don't even need to draw all the lines back and forth, if that helps,

          Chris

          Lately you've been tan, suspicious for the winter.
          All my Plugins I've written

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          • K Offline
            kwistenbiebel
            last edited by

            Thank you Toxic for this very nice tutorial. 👍
            Very useful for all the architects here...

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            • MALAISEM Offline
              MALAISE
              last edited by

              I agree Toxic, thank you for sharing this method. The modelized terrain is very close to the real one. 😄

              MALAISE

              La Connaissance n'a de valeur que partagée

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              • TIGT Offline
                TIG Moderator
                last edited by

                I do have some AutoLisp tools that can read each piece of 2D text and moves it up to suit its 'elevation' and also add a 'point' etc.
                So if you have ACAD [or any CAD program that uses Lisp] you can prepare the flat DWG of the 2D survey before importing it into SUp so that you have 3D cpoints which can them be used directly to make a mesh with various tools (Didier et al)...

                PM me if you'd like a copy of these Lisps...

                TIG

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                • S Offline
                  SabiaSingh
                  last edited by

                  Hello Toxic, With regards to your question about landscape and terrain - can I ask you which company you use to supply the OS map which has the datums and spot levels.

                  Thanks SS

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                  • M Offline
                    marne
                    last edited by

                    Great! Thank you.

                    one-reply-to-this-post last-reply-time reply quote 0
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