Terrain editing

[plucka]

Hi,
In older versions of FloorPlan you could add terrain nodes to the mesh and create complex slopes and contours.  I have V16 and it seems this feature is gone?  I'm having lots of trouble creating contours with complex levels and slopes, for example a cut a fill contour which still has a slope to it.  I can use the pad tool to cut level sections of terrain out but I can't alter the slope of that pad/slab.  I've also played with the plateau tool with no success.  Why would they remove this useful feature or am I just missing something?

[Allan Chesney]

Hi and Welcome to the forum! 

The Terrain tool in the old Floorplan 3D program was good and easy to edit the individual points but could be very time consuming doing so. It was not 'removed' as such but the whole program was replaced by TurboFloorPlan, from completely different programmers.

Unless I am doing a simple one way slope, the ony tools I use is the Plateau.

Picture the 'plateaus' as a set of disks (or random shapes) with sloping edges, that you stack on top of each other.  The secret with Plateaus is to start at the lowest point and work up, drawing the contour lines. If you have a plan you can trace them.  Set the height of the plateau to the spacing of the contours on the plan and set the slope 'slider' to the shallowest slope.  Follow the contour lines and, when they go off the edges of the plan, keep drawing OUTSIDE the Terrain area until you join up again with the same contour line to complete a 'circle'.

The plateau contour line can be any shape, so if you have a valley within the site, follow the line up and down the valley. If you have a retaining wall or 'cliff' at some point then many of the contour lines will folllow along the wall or cliff.  When you have finised you can drag the mouse over the plateaus and you will then see the actual 'centreline' of each 'Plateau'. When you select one of the lines it will have nodes on it that you can move anywhere you like.  The node is at the height of your original setting for that plateau but you can right click and change the height of the whole plateau if you like.  You can also enter a negative figure and creat a 'negative plateau' to lower a section of the terrain.

I hope that, and the image below, will 'de-mistify' the Plateau tool a little.  Practice on a new blank project and you will soon get the idea how it works. You could use the forum Search also for Plateau and Terrain and you will find several discussion on this.

Allan

[Doug.S]

But.....if you have an old terrain....or like the old terrain tool...
you can create a terrain in older FP3D, export it as .3ds and import it in new TFP

If you need cutout for a basement...you can do the cutout in FP3d too and align the terrain in TFP to bldg.

It makes for back'n'forth editing if you make changes...but a one time export/import is easy.

I posted an example file long ago in this forum....not sure if it is still around...would need to search....for grins, did a quick search and found it:
http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,248.msg1048.html#msg1048