How-to do "Measure landscape" tip?

[dianedebuda]

Robban has a "Measuring landscape with measuringstick and 3Dgrids" tip that looks useful, but don't quite know how to build the grid he's talking about.  Putting this in "Help" instead adding to his Tip because other newbies are more likely to find it here?

"First of all make a measuring stick"
File/Catalogs/Library Manger OR rt click Catalog pane & select Library Manager
Edit/Add Material
Use Texture
Select filename
?tile settings?
?Material? (usage?)


"Then do a 3d grid with Layout"
  Assume this is not the Drawing Aids Grid

"and use members"



More about export & reimport that kinda sounds ok.

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Diane,

Robert is referring to the Layout Toolbar (may be turned off).  If you draw a line with this you can right click it and select "Convert to Members". There you can select whatever piece of timber, steel etc you want to use as your "grid".

Click the member, right click choose Array and you can easily arrange them evenly across the plan. Select all and Duplicate, then rotate the Duplicate and drag then into place to form a 3D 'grid'. I am not sure how useful this type of 'grid' would be in determining you heights, although the Measuring Stick would be handy.

Members made this way are very useful for all sorts of purposes.

I find the easiest way to determine heights on the Terrain is just to use the automatic Contour Lines of the Terrain.  Set them to a suitable distance (I have used 1' on the image) and have drawn the plateaus in this case as 1' high, so they roughly follow the Contours. You can then select the plateau lines and adjust to get the contours to where you want them (See image). Note that off the Terrain, it does not matter where the Plateau lines are drawn.

Drag the mouse over the plan and you will see the plateau lines so you can select them. You may find it easier to set the Workspace model colour to a dark colour as I have done (Settings/ Program Settings/ Workspace), so you can easily see the pale blue plateau lines.  Move the blue markers to change the shape of each Pleateau line and you will see the 1' increment of the Contours lines change also. You could use Text to mark the height of each contour line around the edge but you may have to set a large text size for his to be seen easily if the Terrain is big.

A few other tips:
You may also find the 3D Quickview useful to get a quick idea of the shape from each side.  This is a side on view, like an elevation and you can drag the bottom slider to move across the view. You may even find this useful sometimes for panning across a view without it affecting the height setting of the camera. The Elevation images are not the same Terrain - just an example of the view you get.

The Dynamic Cutaway can also be useful to see side sections of the terrain. You can also use the Elevation views and Sections view but you need a light coloured Workspace to see these two.

Sometimes switching to Rendered Outline view helps to see the effect too.

Allan

[dianedebuda]

Stupid me, I thought he was making a grid with the verticals being measuring sticks.  An actual 3D  (X,Y,Z) grid/mesh, not a 2D grid (X,Y) that's elevated.  Looking again, that's not it at all.

I used Sketchup to build contour lines on a Google Earth map, made a jpg & imported that into TFP as a trace layer.  Then I've used Plateaus to trace those contours plus added intermediate ones.  Green contour lines a bit jagged although Plateau construction lines are smooth.   End result looks fairly decent visually, but I want to check elevations at a dozen or so critical spots.  So now want the measuring stick, but unsure of Texture entries.  Figure the tile height should be height of image, 9 ft for the 9 ft image.  Not sure of the width and not sure it matters all that much as long as it's not tiny - say 6".  But the Material?  Assume this is for usage.  Default a good choice?  Edit: Got tripped up by Jack's note "I

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Diane,

Stupid me, I thought he was making a grid with the verticals being measuring sticks.  An actual 3D  (X,Y,Z) grid/mesh, not a 2D grid (X,Y) that's elevated.

It could be.  There is no reason why, having created one mesh level, that you could not duplicate the whole grid and set it at a lower level. You could have as many as you want (eg 1' intervals vertically).  With Arrays and Duplication it would be very quick to make.  The measuring sticks could be part of it as well but if exported and re-imported they may lose the texture the creates the measurement and reassigning these could be a major problem, as each member and stick are only identified in the Material List by a number, so working out which is which would be very difficult. Simpler just to have one 'stick' and move it around to measure different points but if you have a true 3D grid at 1' intervals then you may not need the stick at all.

The question arises as to how precise you want this to be. Are you going to use it in some way specifically?  If you are only doing 3D walktroughs and render images (which is what TFP is all about) then the preciseness of the terrain is not critical - small irregularities will never be seen.

Plateau mods:  Can move segments around ok, but if need to make a change and more segments are required, is there a way to do this?   Since plateaus build upon each other, it'd be a pain to have to have to delete the plateau & redraw since all the upper ones would have to be redone too.

That should not be a problem - if you delete one in the middle, the ones above will drop by 1' (assuming you have 1' plateaus). If you then add one in the middle that was 2', then the ones above will all move up by 2' so no problem. Of course if that was what you wanted to do you would just edit the existing plateau and make it 2'.

Terrain imports: I toyed with bringing the Sketchup 3D terrain into TFP, but decided I'd rather first try the native tools for easier mods.  And I've seen references to importing FP10/11 terrain mesh as terrain.  I didn't see an actual import for terrain, just landscape structures.  So is there a way to import either of these types of meshes and have the terrain-hug objects work correctly?

Simple answer to that question is NO. You can import the mesh into the Catalogue (as in the image above) or into the model, via the Import Wizard, but it will not be treated like a terrain - it is just another object and it cannot be edited other than it's total size and texture. Terrain objects (trees and plant, paths, roads, surface Fills, landscape equipment etc) will all sit on the TFP Terrain (level zero) and have to be individually elevated to that specific point on the imported mesh. - quite a nightmare - if you have a lot of objects.

Allan

[Kajvin - Robert W]

There is no reason why, having created one mesh level, that you could not duplicate the whole grid and set it at a lower level. You could have as many as you want (eg 1' intervals vertically).  With Arrays and Duplication it would be very quick to make.  The measuring sticks could be part of it as well but if exported and re-imported they may lose the texture the creates the measurement and reassigning these could be a major problem, as each member and stick are only identified in the Material List by a number, so working out which is which would be very difficult. Simpler just to have one 'stick' and move it around to measure different points but if you have a true 3D grid at 1' intervals then you may not need the stick at all.

Then you export the 3D grid and the measuring-stick together it will only be the will only be 2 numbers of materials the it is rather easy to get back the image for the measuring-stick again. if you download the dxf file in my tip you will see what I mean, end the matrix for this 3D grid is 10'X10'X2 with 0' and 5' elevation and 50'x50' width that is not a good dxf-file I will do a better grid and upload as a BIM-file.

/Robert

[dianedebuda]

If you then add one in the middle that was 2', then the ones above will all move up by 2'

I thought the plateaus added elevation in the time-order of when they were built; from what you've said, I can delete a middle one, then rebuild it by totally enclosing the uppers.  Makes a whole lot more sense.  Can have multiple independent plateaus at the same base level that way.

No way to add/delete segments though?

I'm going through great pains with the terrain since the focus of this model is for landscaping.  The buildings, not so much at this time.

[Kajvin - Robert W]

Hi Allan and Diane
If you use the measuring-stick to landscaping you can't use 0" as base offset because the stick is actually a column, so the best is to make a stick for landscaping that have a base offset that is negative value of the  for Floor level on ground Floor if you have a special location for the landscaping then the floor level is already 0" in normal case.
For example If Ground Floor Floor level is 1' then you need to set base offset to -1'

/Robert

I ad a BIM-file for measuring stick Landscape stick have base offset -1'
Ad BIM-file for measuring stick and 3D grid