Place building on a topography

SketchUp
1

Hi everyone,

I want to align the white objects (the buildings) to the topography, but I don’t know how to do it and I tried to find a way but my brain explode haha.

Thank you so much for your help,
Jérôme

TOPO_.skp (5.6 MB)

attached the skp file - sketchup 2017 pro

2

It looks like your buildings are aligned laterally when you view from the top Standard View under the Camera Menu–except the purple one. In this view you can move the purple one around until it is not in the street (I added the color).

Screen Shot 2021-04-25 at 12.38.14 PM
Screen Shot 2021-04-25 at 12.38.14 PM814×738 68.2 KB

3

To put the buildings on the terrain model is more work. Each building has it’s own height (you decide) at the highest point above where it meets the terrain. You move the building model down and then set the height the roof would be above grade. Then you can push-pull the building bottom down so that all walls meet or exceed the terrain level. I did this for one building. Nice terrain model, very hilly.

Make sure you have everything grouped to avoid sticking to the wrong thing

Screen Shot 2021-04-25 at 12.44.16 PM
Screen Shot 2021-04-25 at 12.44.16 PM748×557 52.8 KB
(some of the buildings aren’t grouped.)

4

Thank you so muchhhh! I expected an easier way (or maybe a plugin) because it’s a lot of work, there is too much buildings haha but let’s go! Thank you :slight_smile:

5

Or really… you can just make the buildings tall enough so that you bring them down to the terrain level and just move them up and down to make the height right, if after all you are not concerned about the basements or foundations being right. There may be a plugin that helps. I don’t do towns

6

There are some extensions that can drop the buildings down to the terrain level, but they will only get you so far. In this case your topo information is pretty rough, in actuality the streets and each of the lots would be level or closer to level. Putting flat buildings onto a curved surface requires a judgment call in each case to get a result that feels close to reality. You will likely need to adjust each building manually no matter how you approach this, @pbacot s is a good method, it’s not that many buildings.

Here I use an extension to drop all buildings to touch the topo, but as you see there is still adjustment needed individually.

3

7

Thank you! what is the name of this extension please ?

8

That one is Sandbox Bonus Tools. There are some others in this thread.

9

DropGC is the name of an extension (free) that will drop them down till the axis of the component (or group) touches the 3d surface.