Importing Google Earth terrain

I have been trying to find the answer to what should be a simple question.

I recently imported terrain from Google Earth for a particular site in the UK. Part of the terrain was above the XY plane and part below. If I didn’t know better, I would have assumed the base plane (XY where Z=0) would be sea level. But I know the site is actually about 80m above sea level.

So, how do you tell the height of the base plane in imported terrain?


There is no reference to a real-world elevation datum in SU.
The geographic coordinates of a geo-located model coincide with SketchUp’s Origin [0,0,0]
The elevation of the terrain at those geographic coordinates also coincides with SketchUp’s Origin.

However, if you have knowledge of the real-world elevation at the model coordinates, then one of @TIG’s plugins may be of interest.

TIG: Add Height from Datum v2.0

TIG: Coords-Tag from Datum v3.4


FAQ for Add Location changes in SketchUp
https://help.sketchup.com/en/geodatachange


Thanks, that’s a very full reply from the obvious person (judging by your username!).

It begs another question that I am not sure is answered by any of the links. I do have levels for some parts of my site. If you wanted to plot the real world position of the 0,0,0 location of imported terrain so as to compare with level data, how would you do that? Or would you do it the other way round, ie. establish a point for which you know level data and then use that as the focus for terrain capture?

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