I’m planning to have a surveyor use a GPS to collect precise horizontal coordinates and elevation values for a site plan. Importing an ASCII file of those x-y-z values for use in Sandbox would be an ideal approach, although I could enter them individually if that was the only option available to me. I’ve not found a means to accomplish this using the tools available in Sketchup Pro 2022, nor have I found an extension or plugin for that purpose that will load or actually works as yet. Hoping something exists and I’ve just not stumbled across it.
I can do transormations from pretty much any coordinate system the surveyor might use into one compatible with Sketchup.
You might have a look at Trimble Scan Essentials. Or, if you can create a CSV file with the coordinates, you can use a Point Cloud importer to import the file. Then use SandBox tools or TopoShaper from Fredo6 to create terrain. I prefer Toposhaper for that.
So far, none of this makes any sense. I’ve got a .csv file of xyz data and haven’t found a way to bring it into Sketchup yet. Toposhaper might do it, but haven’t been able to figure out how after several hours trying. It seems like this should be a pretty simple process, but after days and days researching here and other sites I still have no idea.
Yup, over and over again. Nothing comes through. Most of my research time has been spent on trying to find documentation on the format of data it will import - deg, min, sec.dec; decimal degrees, etc - with no luck so far. I’m a bit flabbergasted that it’s this difficult to find much documentation on any of the third-party extensions.
After about 15 minutes of searching I haven’t found a way to attach my .csv file to this reply.
How big is the CSV file? If less than 15MB, drag and drop it into your next post. Otherwise, upload it to a file sharing service like Dropbox, OneDrive or WeTranfer and post a shared link here.
Or use the Upload button above the posting window.
I’ve received data from a surveyor that includes latitude, longitude and elevation for about 100 points. I am trying to bring these into Sketchup so I don’t have to find some way to convert their distances from 0,0,0.
You could use a spreadsheet to convert the latitudes and longitudes to distances from one point that you select as a datum. Hang on and I’ll see if I can make something to show that.
Thanks, Dave. I also have the plat with bearings and distances.
So there’s no way to orient my plan to a location on the earth where latitude/longitude coordinates will plot?
SketchUp’s coordinate system is based on linear distances from the origin. You can’t just enter latitude and longitude.
There are extensions that will take bearing and distance from a datum but it would be very tedious to enter all of those points that way. It would probably be easier to use the bearing and distance values to generate the X and Y values. Then combine them with the elevations to get x,y, and z to generate the point cloud.
Seems odd that it won’t take coordinates since Trimble bought it. That’s why I’ve been headed down that path. Being a cartographer and GIS guy for a few decades I’m used to locking things down to their position on the planet.
I don’t know why that’s so odd. Again, SketchUp works with linear dimensions. You could probably write a Ruby script that would take the geo-location latitude and longitude as the datum and calculate the x and y values from your csv file to place the points. With your decades of cartography and GIS experience, I guess you’d know how to do those calculations. I probably haven’t anything useful to offer, then, so I’d stand down.
I’m not a programmer and have never heard of Ruby until last week. My carto/GIS background didn’t include calcuating coordinate transformation; there was software for that. Thanks, though, for giving it a shot here.
