I am building a site plan for a park in my neighborhood. I have imported the site from Google Earth, made it 3D, and added contour lines. I need to add the property boundary to the site, but I don’t want to just draw it because I want it to be as accurate as possible, so I want to import a GIS shapefile (geolocated) and drape it over my 3D model. Is there any way to do this?
Hi Jesse,
I would recommend converting the shapefile to DWG and then importing that into Sketchup. ArcGIS works well for me for this process and they offer a free trial. This will let you import your boundary lines for you to place where needed in your site pan. I do not believe there is a way to link the geo-coordinates so it will automatically lie in it’s correct location, unfortunately, but the boundary line dimensions will be precise and you can move it over the site plan as best as possible. While this still involves some manual adjustments on the user’s end it should still be more accurate than manually drawing the entire boundary from guesswork. I would align the boundary on the flat snapshot layer, then raise the boundary line above the highest point of terrain on the z axes and use the sandbox>drape tool on the terrain layer (you’ll have to unlock it or make an editable copy<-recommended).
This may seem like more info than necessary but I wanted to be thorough, just in case. Hope this helps.