I just tested out the new oob google maps terrain data source, and it appears to be a jump to the same quality level as before, nice job!
The downside though is that you’re limited to a relatively small area for the higher quality terrain. The larger your sample, the less detailed the terrain data becomes. This is a problem on bigger site models because unlike what we had previously with google inside of Sketchup, there doesn’t appear to be a way to tile other areas around the base location and gradually build up your site in detail (rather than just taking one giant terrain area all at once that’s very low quality).
If there was a way to bump up the detail level so that larger areas didn’t automatically default to a 20x20 grid (which would be the easiest solution) that would be amazing. Allowing us to manually select other areas around the base location would also work though (like it is now with the ‘add more imagery’ function), it’s just more tedious.
I couldn’t seem to get the new create google map texture feature to work, but it seems like a promising new feature if we could get higher resolution areas than just 640x640.
Here’s an example of the detail level at various scales (with the new Sketchup terrain source for reference). The first is a 200m x 200m area which you can see is much higher quality than what we have now, while the second is 1000m x 1000m. You can see how the detail level scales proportionally to the point that it’s actually lower quality than the SRTM data.
Thank you for your return.
I am planning to improve the terrain precision but I have to deal with Google Map API usage limit.
I have 2 options:
Increase the grid size (40 x 40, 60x60 …)
Propose to extend the terrain on one side
I will post a message when improvment will be available.
Is the usage limit on a user by user basis or is it for the entire plugin? (combining everyone that uses it) Individual limits don’t seem like too much of a problem as long as they’re not super restrictive.
As for increasing the grid size versus extending the terrain on the sides - ideally we’d be able to do both. You never know when you’re going to need to add more pieces to your site model, or certain areas that have higher detail, so it’s good to have the flexibility to be able to add those later on.
In terms of stitching it all together from the beginning though, taking one giant but detailed grid is certainly the easiest and cleanest solution, but for that to work ideally we’d be able to go all the way up to 100x100 grids or larger.
It is not a viable solution because there is a limit on the number of points that can be requested. This service was designed to give elevations along polyline paths, not transmit 3d terrain meshes.
We don’t expect that we will have additional data products available until at least next year. Those products would also be subject to data availability (coverage).
Thanks for the heads up, I’ve adjusted my original post. Note that this was already changed in the Help Center article.
@tominthegong I deleted your two additional and unnecessary posts, please only post once and be patient, it will build much better goodwill among other community members. Thanks!
@DavidR Dear Dave my humble apologies for persisting with this but the statement "This means that Pro users will see two new layers in add location: “DigitalGlobe Satellite” and “Trimble Map” was in a help article in the first place how is the user supposed to know what the latest fix is even Microsoft advises users when patches are invoked. What do you mean by supplier of data ?? I am talking about Sketchup terrain function ???
Why are you so fixated on those labels. The text of the labels has changed since what you quote was written. I showed you the labels for the two available layers.
I know what you are talking about. Trimble doesn’t invent the terrain data. They purchase it from DigitalGlobe. If DigitalGlobe has the terrain available, it’s available in SketchUp’s Add Location. If it isn’t available from DigitalGlobe, it won’t be available in Add Location. SketchUp can only pass on what it can get from the supplier. That can’t be that hard to understand. Besides, it’s been explained already.
What latest fix?
You can find out who the supplier of the terrain data is by looking at the lower right corner of the Add Location screen.
This sucks…poor image quality different projections Lat and longs placements appear in diff spots from Google Earth images. All our customers use Google Earth. We had the same issues when Autodesk products decided to use Bing services instead of Google earth…
We’re pretty much done with the SketchUp now since the product is inferior to the older Google friendly versions, and we only used it as a workaround because Autodesk went with Bing. Now SU does the same. Pfft
Good News, I found a work around for geo locating our 3dmodels precisely in 2016 SU. Although there is no image background, You can still geo locate your models by entering the Coords Manually.
The steps for that…at the bottom left hand corner furthest left in the program window… select… Model info>Geo-Locations>Set Manual Location>enter your coords>close window
Now you can export the model to a KMZ and place it GE to get the best image background viewing.
Hope this helps some. It’s good enough for what we do.
You can blame Google for that. It was Google that took away the option for SketchUp and others to use their map API.
For for the Geo-Location thing and entering Lat/Long, that’s been available since before Google bought SketchUp and the Add Location feature was developed… It’s set in Model Info.
You do know Google leases their API to software companies now? Trimble and Autodesk aren’t buying it. So their customers are getting screwed by promising them the moon with high quality aerial images only giving them stinky cheese like bing and digitalmaps.
No thanks… We’ll be moving to software eventually that’s google earth friendly or finding workarounds that work with GE since that’s what all our customers are using when viewing their construction sites and sending to their customers.
And BTW Google developed SU years ago. They didn’t buy it. So I’m assuming you meant when Trimble bought SU. And yes I know entering the coords has been available forever. I posted the solution as a workaround for precise geo-locating without using the Geo-Location>Add location in the UI.
