I’m wondering what your best solution to creating geometry like the image attached. I’m trying to find the best tried and true method you all use. I usually use plugins like soap bubble, topo shaper, and some others, but it is always a fight. Please let me know how you all would approach this. I’m hoping to find the permanent solution to sloped pathway work in Sketchup.
CurviShear + Curviloft plugins by Fredo or CurviShear + Eneroth Upright Extruder.
I’m not entirely sure what you are asking, but I thought it worth pointing out that Stamp from the sandbox tools can position a predefined slope/shape into a terrain.
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mihai,s thanks so much! Curvishear is absolutely going to be in my toolbelt from now on! That solves the problem of taking our flat CAD lines and sloping the pathway lines to the actual number height we know we need to hit. Fantastic!
Curviloft is great as well. It will certainly work for the majority of our pathways, but seems to run into some problems if we need to generate geometry like the attached image. Is there an efficient way to create this geometry correctly with curviloft all in one go? I currently broke it apart into sections and used your recommended process and was able to create our geometry correctly.
Also with Curviloft I can not seem to get a perfectly flat end line. Is there a setting for this in the tool? The results I get are like this image here:
Thanks so much for the help!
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Hey Box thanks for the reply! So I usually do not get a graded topo surface that I can drape or stamp into when I start a project. I usually get all the CAD files which will tell me the height points of specific areas of the site. Enough info to know the heights of all the pathways and key areas. So I usually have to create the sloped pathways based on that info and then after that I can create the terrain based on the pathway heights that we modeled in.
The times that I do have a topo surface to begin with, I usually use our CAD lines and drape them onto the surface and then extrude. I don’t think I have found a use for Stamp in our projects though. Our pathways never sit into the ground so we just never use it. We usually drape onto the surface and then extrude up.
Thanks for the feedback!
I’ve never noticed Curviloft not using the lines given it for the boundary. Are you sure / is it repeatable? Did you subdivide the edge? Usually when I am using Curviloft with some straight sides, I subdivide the edge to try to create an even subdivision of the mesh in regard to adjacent curved edges.
You’re welcome!
Just change the settings
With Soap Skin Bubble
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Hey there pbacot. Yes I was able to repeat the outcome, but it turns out I just needed a bit more practice with the plugin haha. Everything seems to work fine now. Editing the subdivisions like you suggested solved that particular problem. Thanks so much!
Hey mihai.s thanks for the reply! Yes I do believe I have it all figured out now. Our go to will be this:
- Curvishear for creating sloped pathway lines from our flat CAD lines
- Curviloft for skinning pathways from the newly sloped lines (soap bubble occasionally)
- Soap Bubble for creating terrain geometries.
- Sandbox draw from contours as a last attempt skinning effort for problem geometry. Always seems to work, but is rarely pretty…
I just worked my way through this project using these methods. I think this toolset basically has everything we need to accomplish all terrains and hardscapes for our projects.
Thanks so much!
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