Visualise buildings and topography with 3D data

SketchUp Pro
1

Dear community
As part of a student project, the aim is to create a 3D representation of certain areas of Switzerland and then make changes (airports, railway stations). On SwissTopo you can download sections of buildings (swissBuildings3D 2.0) and landscapes (Swissalti3d). The buildings can be excellently dragged into SketchUp and are displayed very well. However, the environment is missing, there we only get an XYZ file, where I have not yet found a solution to drag this into SketchUp as well.
Can anyone tell me if they already have experience with the processing of XYZ data to implement, or even with representations of SwissTopo data?

Thanks in advance for your help

2

You might have a look at some of the various point cloud importers. There’s at least one in the Extension Warehouse. And then TopoShaper from Sketchucation to create the terrain surface from the point cloud.

3

Take, too, a look at QGis. It is free, and can possibly convert your data into, for instance, a DXF with contours that can be imported into SketchUp.
There are also plugins to import and create a terrain using xyz data.

4

Converting XYZ to DAE for importing into SketchUp:

Using an XYZ file from the site you gave an example

xyz_data
xyz_data652×547 31.4 KB

I imported the XYZ file into MeshLab, and then, using the following commands, I created the surface

  • Filters > Point Set > Compute normals for point sets
  • Filters > Remeshing, Simplification and Reconstruction > Surface Reconstruction Screened Poisson
  • Project panel > Turn off position 0 and select position 1 (Poisson Mesh) - right side of the screen
  • File > Export Mesh as > DAE

xyz_ml-3
xyz_ml-31580×1006 76 KB

I imported the DAE file into SketchUp

xyz_skp
xyz_skp1296×780 212 KB

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