Hi, Just a follow up.

I've attached a photo of the final model including 3d printed parts and 5kg of tinted black resin for the water and a welded steel stand consisting of 18 unsupported legs.

If your interested you can see the rest of the project which is now on my website, all modelled in sketchup and rendered manually in photoshop. - I still have a lot of images to add but you can scroll down to view whats there at the minute.

http://www.lukeriggall.co.uk/architecture/the-arc-centre

The final master model stats were around 25 million edges, 10 million faces within 400k components, performance was manageable (on 2015) by using layers.

ok I've made the paths (using illustrators join points), imported in SKU again and generated the tubes.
That will do for now, but does anyone know if I can make them droop down in the middle a bit?

Basically I would need to convert each edge into an arc and then run the lines2tubes again.

Any idea how to do this?

@tig said:

If you want a 'tube' then this will add tubes to selected edges...
You can adjust the diameter, reduce the number of sides etc...
http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=lines2tubes

That would be good, might be the way to go, can it 'droop' a little between end points of the line? (i.e. 150mm droop) a slight arc

@tig said:

Sam D Mitch made a tool to link cpoints.
http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=Connect_Guide_Points
If you make the connected edges you could then use a tool [I think SDM also has one - 'Add&AlignComponent' ?] to replace selected edges with say a cube component which is inserted at each edge's start, then stretched along that edge direction/length.
Visit his web-site for more info/ideas... http://sdmitch.blogspot.co.uk/

Many thanks TIG as always, a great idea.

I'm connect the points manually as no program will know which points to connect to another.
So now I'm looking to replace the edges with a component which is rotated and stretched.

I've installed the plugin you recommended but its not doing what I hoped.

Hi,

I have 2000 points which I need to connect up using the same component.

Essentially this is a walkway and the points are where the posts come up.
I'd like to add rope between each point (nearest points) as a kind of hand rail, and it would be good for performance if that span of rope between each point was the same component but rotated and stretched/scaled along a single axis.

I have attached my points for your reference.

Does anyone know how I could do this?

The only alternative for me would be to draw up them all and extrude it pretending its good enough.
I don't have time to move & copy, rotate and then scale every block individually.

points.skp

Completed!

Took 60 hours on the CNC milling bed using a 6mm drill bit, I wanted smaller but it was unrealistic.
from 36mm Birch plywood (2x 18mm 4' x 4').

Next stages for it are to fill in areas of water with resin, not decided on the colour or to leave it clear yet though!
And 3D printed buildings will be set on top of that.

I will also use the digital model for some renders.

Many thanks for the help everyone, its looking fantastic, I think ely862me's version has worked the best as it is the healthiest and has the most detail.

I'll be sure to post final photographs up when I can!

ely862me: It would be good if you could explain your workflow? Just that there seems to be a noise where I would expect flat surfaces, I actually quite like it but just wondered if you did it in a more powerful program like the suggested blender? or wether it is in fact from sketchup?

Many thanks again, excellent help from the guru's!

@ely862me said:

Actually it did it quite fast and it is not that much of a deal. Just an i7 3770, others than processor speed is not important with sketchup. The eaten memory is just 3.5 gb.
I am trying to clean it up by bits to not draw it into the not responding mode.

Question: Why don't use the cam program that creates the code for the cnc? Usually these programs have the ability to create mesh from bitmaps.

Excellent,

Really? I spoke to them any they said they couldn't so been trying all day to do it this way instead.

edit: Plus I need this anyway for the master model for render to be fair.

or maybe run CleanUp first?

@ely862me said:

127 mb

Wow how on earth did your machine do that?!

Does it zip for dropbox etc...?

@cotty said:

Maybe Bitmap to mesh is not the route of choice here.

Thomthoms note:
"Note! Generates two triangles per pixel!
250x250 pixel image generates a mesh of ~125K faces! ( 250 * 250 * 2 )"

for your first image: 1360x1360x2 = 3.699.200 faces!

Can you share those images here?

It is the only way I can generate the terrain from this and there are only 7 different colours/ levels, so once generated I could reduce the mesh significantly using cleanup3 (merge faces & remove stray edges). I may then smooth it using artisan or similar.

Or perhaps the "Mesh from bitmap" might be better than the height map method, that was I could clean up then select by material and move up or down to create the levels.

(I have tried using illustrator to live trace and then extrude but the edges never align properly, I tried attaching the example as far as I got with that method, but it'll be even more power hungry in the end, and the file is 10mb)

Heres the image anyway.

When milled out I will be layering up 5 different woods with different shades so it will stand out for each layer.

Here's also an example of the outcome - except this was a contour model using plywood (different site).

@rich o brien said:

Use Blender

Subdivide a plane

Use the height map as displacement modifier texture

Apply modifier

Then reduce mesh as needed and export.

But I don't have blender... And have never used it

Once CleanUp has been run on the flat mesh, merging faces and erasing stray edges, the model should be rather small, its just getting there first!

EDIT: COMPLETED, THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED

Hi everyone,

I need to ask a really big favour of anyone who has a really powerful computer as mines from 2008 and I am being quoted 9 hours to generate a detailed terrain in which I can use to create a 3D CNC Milled wood model (around 1200mm diameter). The deadline is coming up and I really can't wait for so long.

If you have one and are willing to help please post here or PM me, I can email over the image files required.

1. I have a png image of a landscape which I have made into a displacement map, this image should be 1200mm square.

2. Using ThomThom's plugin "Bitmap to Mesh" available in the extension warehouse, (forum http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=31339.

3. Select the image, right click and select "Mesh from heightmap".

4. This should now be generating the flat terrain and provide an eta in the bottom left of your screen.

5. You could then run Cleanup3 and set it to merge faces (UNCHECK ignore materials), and then enable erase stray edges. then zip the file to send to me.

1360 x 1360 pixels (High Definition)

Is anyone available to help me with this please?

This plug in is amazing, thank you so much.

But it took me a long time to find, I suggest in your extension warehouse keywords you add "Displacement Map" or Displacement baking and similar stuff to help others find it.

I've changed my method, now using the Bitmap to Mesh plugin from ThomThom.
One word. Amazing.

Saves me a lot of hassle in illustrator, live tracing etc... or installing Maya for displacement map.
Case Closed

Hi,

I have a dilema, I am modelling a complex landscape and have thousands of random shapes which I have generated the faces on, but I need to delete the internal faces to make holes.

Lets imagine theres 1000 different shaped doughnuts with the hole in, except the hole is a face, how can I select/delete these faces, is there an extension anyone knows of that can delete islands? (I haven't found any)

Thanks!

Sure.

I messed about in terminal but couldn't get it to work so I downloaded this tiny service app:

1 - Download SymbolicLinker: http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/~seiryu/symboliclinker.html

2 - Mount the dmg file and copy the .services file into your (Mac HD)/Library/Services (if its not there add it)

3 - Open the SymbolicLinker.services file from the folder you just copied it into

4 - Navigate to your server or dropbox or second hard drive - wherever you store your materials collection

5 - right click on your materials folder and at the bottom there will be a new option saying "create symbolic link"

6 - now select the new symbolic link it just made and copy it

7 - Navigate into your sketchup folders ~/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2015/SketchUp/
if you can't see it use; finder->go->go to folder and copy that in and press enter

8 - delete the sketchup materials folder (OR RENAME IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THE DEFAULT MATERIALS) - I've already collected these into my custom folder anyway so I just deleted them.

9 - paste (your symbolic link) and rename to "Materials"

All Done!

Can do the same for style and components, you can also use these instructions to store other folders on a second drive if you use an SSD.

Mission accomplished, Symbolic links in place
Thanks!

Hi,

On my PC's at work I set up a centralised materials, components, styles etc folder on the server so all workstations can edit and add materials for all. (can't remember if I changed the default location or added them as favourites destinations)

I've since added Mac's to the mix but cannot find out how to change the default locations of materials/styles/components etc... or add them as favourites to the drop down list.

How can I do this on a Mac please?