Large 4km Model - can I avoid clipping plane?

[cmeed]

Hello All,
I have a job where there is a stunning back drop which is key to get right, with sight lines crucial to making it look good.
unfortunalty the backdrop is about 4km away. I have downloaded the relevant google earth images and terrain, all looks good apart from this Clipping plane. I have read that a clipping plane results from geometry very far away from the origin which is why I presume this is happening.

Is there a way i could avoid this clipping plane in this situation?

Cheers
C

[pbacot]

Try going to the Knowledge center and reading about clipping. There's a lot explained there. Then you might eliminate all the factors except, of course, size. Maybe it will help to be sure the area of work is near the origin (axes crossing point) of the model.

[mitcorb]

Can you place an image-appropriately sized, scaled, proportioned- to suit your fixed(?) view in the near background so that it appears 4km away, when really it is not? I assume the backdrop is like a range of mountains or something?
Can you visit the site and make your own images from the vantage point? Or have someone do this for you?
Just ideas?

[Krisidious]

consider splitting your model up into component that are more local in area to the size constraints. ie work on a bolt as a component in another instance of sketchup. work on land in another. work on larger aspects such as settings and scenes and backdrops in the main model itself.

also remember that scaling everything up to work on tight spaces will help and then scale it all back down.

the bottom line is that you can't work on tight, smaller areas of large area models. it's one or the other.

[AdamB]

One possibility is to load your backdrop geometry, bake it into a background image and then use that with the foreground geometry.