How to make a terrain relief from lifted contours which consist of multiple small lines

Hi
Is there a way to select all things which are at the same height?

I think Dave already separated the contours and eliminated the vertical edges.

But, anyway, if you want to make it on your original model

  1. Do a SaveAs to work on a copy of the model (so you keep the original just in case)

  2. Select all edges and faces, and groups containing them

  3. Do an Explode to get all edges in the active context.

  4. Open the Ruby console and copy/paste the following single line and press Enter

Sketchup.active_model.selection.add Sketchup.active_model.active_entities.grep(Sketchup::Edge).find_all { |e| e.start.position.z == e.end.position.z }

  1. This will select all the contours. Copy them (CTRL-C) and paste them elsewhere in the model and enclose them in a Group.

From there, you can

  • use Sandbox From Contours
  • use TopoShaper by selecting the group. Have a look at the videos in the plugin page of TopoShaper on Sketchucation
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Thank you all! It worked :slight_smile:

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You could try also with TopoShaper if you wish to get a more regular mesh and avoid ‘long’ triangles.

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Just as an aside, the Sandbox from Contours tool also works if you erase everything BUT the vertical edges. It manages to ignore the lower ends of vertical edges. The horizontal faces and edges are perhaps easier to remove (you can select by double clicking which will remove the vertical faces too.

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I do this a lot.

What Ive found works best is to simply delete ALL VERTICAL FACES after push pulling the contour faces. (that is those vertical faces that would be the “riser” of the stair. Select all of a normal or part of a big model; to minimize processing time. Too much geometry can cause some crashes. run FROM CONTOURS, and voila.
Works every time.

I fixed it already! Thanks!

Does the ‘drape tool’ also work for non-mesh surfaces? It doesn’t react

Dont think so. It seems to me that’s simply a copy of stuff from one flat face to another.

Drape tool can project onto terrain -

Stamp and drape tools