Terrain From Levels?

GreenSaints · 9 Jan 2010, 18:10

Hello - me again!

I have a couple of drawings for my site which have ground levels and contours on them.

Is there an easy (and I stress easy!) way to create a terrain in SU?

Thank you

d12dozr · 9 Jan 2010, 18:21

In your menu bar: Draw>Sandbox>From Contours

Rich O Brien · 9 Jan 2010, 18:23

Enable Sandbox Tools in the Preferences Dialog Box

Then restart SU and in the Tools menu you should see Sandbox. Select it and icons appear on your Toolbar.

One of these is From Contours where you can select contour lines at different heights then run this tool and terrain is generated

Rich O Brien · 9 Jan 2010, 18:24

D12dozr got there first... Sorry

GreenSaints · 9 Jan 2010, 19:51

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your responses.

I'm really confused - I imported my dwg file into SU and you can definately see level changes etc. but when all the lines are imported (I didn't have to explode it) they are all segements?

So I've highlighted all the lines and did the Sandbox command.....but then SU is just hanging

I did find this tutorial in case anyone else wants to do this http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23732

d12dozr · 9 Jan 2010, 19:56

@greensaints said:

So I've highlighted all the lines and did the Sandbox command.....but then SU is just hanging

If the imported file is very large, you may need to do it in sections. If that doesn't solve it, maybe some one better with imported CAD drawings can answer better than me.

GreenSaints · 9 Jan 2010, 20:03

The doing it in sections worked

Thank you

d12dozr · 9 Jan 2010, 20:08

Good. Cheers!

GreenSaints · 10 Jan 2010, 20:16

Sorry - me again

The Sandbox tool has worked fine, but there are certain parts of my terrain which have no level even though there is a Z definition in AutoCad?

Any ideas?

Thanks again

Rich O Brien · 10 Jan 2010, 20:28

Can you post an image?

GreenSaints · 10 Jan 2010, 20:43

Not really as it's hard to get the right angle.

I've added the SU file though (3.5mb)

File

Rich O Brien · 10 Jan 2010, 21:19

Firstly.....Wow, that is a very detailed terrain

Secondly, is this what you are talking about?

Those 'undone contours' are Grouped and SU doesn't make contours from Grouped Geometry.

GreenSaints · 10 Jan 2010, 21:30

I don't understand what you are saying!

This is the section I noticed which didn't look like it had any elevation.

Attached is the .DWG I imported. I noticed the text didn't turn up either?

Thanks

levels.zip

TIG · 11 Jan 2010, 10:28

@greensaints said:

... This is the section I noticed which didn't look like it had any elevation.
Attached is the .DWG I imported. I noticed the text didn't turn up either?

You should either Explode such 'grouped/blocked' things in the CAD drawing beforehand, OR after it imports into SUp as a component, BUT before you make any surfaces...
SUp doesn't import Text [or Dims or Hatching etc]...
Since what SUP imports is limited it's best to strip down the CAD file to just what you need and purge/audit it before the SUp import - it'll import much faster and produce far fewer unwanted things in SUp that you'll need to Purge [Model INfo > Statistics] - there might still be some unused layers, components etc [e.g. the block 'arch_tick' if there were any dims] that get imported - you need to Purge the SUp Model of these to keep it 'trim'...