Since version 7 this has been possible by using the slider "Direction from surface" in the ecosystem painter. If set at "perpendicular" you can populate up-side down if you want to.

@hombre said:

Thank you for your effort in attempting to help me understand, but I still don't get it.
I have imported the model, broken it down into it's various object components, copied the 'grass' object,
pasted it onto another layer, and deleted the original grass object on the first layer. Next I changed the object
to an ecosystem and populated it with a livegrowth grass object.

In the examples below, you can see that the grass ecosystem ignores the perimeter selection that was made and
simply grows wherever it wants within the parameters of it's own specific design footprint. The only way I have gotten close to containing it is to make the scale so tiny that it encroaches more like an inch instead of a foot.

I am also attaching a pic of the layers for your review.

What am I doing wrong, or not doing?

Under "density" tab in the material editor, try to adjust the "decay near foreign objects" value.
That might get you the result you wanted:)

@unknownuser said:

Much sympathy here. My must frustrating moment is when I use shift+middle mouse button click to try and pan in AutoCad. That's the command to pan is SU but in AutoCad it's the command to orbit. On a large AutoCad file I end up waiting for 2 minutes + for it to stop thinking before I can correct my mistake.

-Brodie

been there, done that

I wish I would have the time and stamina to learn 3DSMax, and just use that software for all my 3D needs

let see..
I loaded the kmz file into Globalmapper, exported it to a shape-file with the "elevation" attribute. Opened the shapefile in ArcScene, extruded from 0 to "elevation" value. Exported to VRML, imported VRML into Rhino 3D, exported to Sketchup.....

not pretty but it works OK..

This is what I got out of it..

cape.zip

great initiative:)