I have found the location terrain model that is available through the model geo-location function to be very useful. I wonder about its accuracy, but it is helpful.
I wonder if anyone has used a commercial service that provides topos in PDF or CAD file format that would be more accurate and less cluttered with surface imagery.
And for a nominal price, of course.
References would be appreciated.
Thanks
I haven’t used other services like that for a long time so I don’t have a current recommendation.
You do know that you can get rid of the surface imagery either temporarily or permanently if you want, right?
Locally sourcing this is one way. However, how would you have someone provide a digital surface image that doesn’t show everything? We had a local surveyor do the topo for a couple properties. They used both publicly available Lidar and field survey, plus flew a drone for a good resolution image.
A cheaper method might involve you obtaining the Lidar data yourself. We have that available from our county but the image data is poor. One could import a different satellite image and overlay that instead on the terrain from the Lidar.
Here in Finland the national survey data (Lidar scans and map data) is free, and I subscribe to a commercial service that makes that more accessible (by generating, for instance, DXF maps and topo surfaces out of the Lidar scans). The accuracy is quite good, but as the scan points are some meters apart it misses some smaller features. National Survey is in the process of re-scanning the whole country with, if I remember right, three scan points per square meter.
A few years back I used OS OpenData (UK) to create a 3D topography of a site.
It was so time consuming and convoluted finding reliable, easy to use software that could open the data and convert it to a SketchUp compatible format.
I managed to drape a Google Earth snapshot of the site onto the SU model.
Fortunately it was sufficiently accurate for the project that I was working on.
That’s news to me! How do you do that?
Thanks.
The imagery is just a texture. If you only want to get rid of the imagery temporarily, change the face style to Monochrome so it isn’t displayed. If you just aren’t interested in the imagery at all, delete the textures from the In Model materials.
Thanks, good to know.
And, checking in the web found that Trimble itself has a map and topo site: MyTopo Map Store: Waterproof Maps Shipped in 24 Hours
Does not seem to perky, topo from my area dated from '60’s, but might be worth checking out.
Seems like there would be a niche for a web-based service, but don’t know what tech end would look like.
Anyway, if anyone knows of such a service, please inform.
Thanks