Importing Google Earth terrain

[simoncbevans]

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?

[Geo]

@simoncbevans

Part of the terrain was above the XY plane and part below.
…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?

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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

SketchUp Plugins | PluginStore | SketchUcation

TIG: Coords-Tag from Datum v3.4

SketchUp Plugins | PluginStore | SketchUcation

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@simoncbevans

I recently imported terrain from Google Earth…

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

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Upcoming Change to Add Location

Hey all you SketchUppers We have a pretty big announcement coming down the pike that we feel you’ll appreciate knowing about sooner than later so you can plan accordingly. Specifically, we’re moving away from the Google provided geographic data. This has important implications for both satellite imagery and terrain features for some versions of SketchUp. We’re sure you’ll have a ton of questions so we’ve already posted our most expected questions in the Help Center here: FAQ for Add Location ch…

[simoncbevans]

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?