I am trying to make a site model of an area of a city that is roughly 6000ft by 6000ft or 2km by 2km (probably slightly less). I would like the site model to include the topography of the site (elevational changes) as well as the buildings and roads of the site area.
I’ve tried watching tutorials that involve grasshopper and the Elk plugin, but the tutorials that I’ve found seem to cover either how to make a topography map without any buildings or how to make a site model with buildings and roads but no topographical data.
I have a contour map of my site that includes elevation data, and I’d like to attach the file as reference but it is 135mb…
I would appreciate any tips, advice, tutorials, how-to’s, etc. on how I can create a site map with topographic data/elevations/changes as well as buildings and roads that sit on the topography accordingly.
Well … unless you have the entire Moon in mind this is rather odd: I mean we are taking about curves here (contours + site data [ i.e. buildings, roads, cats and dogs]).
Anyway … given the contours and their elevation attribute you can do a 3d “solid” (or sheet like) result with various ways (as Mesh [faster but uglier] or Brep [slower but way better looking]). Like:
That said I hate meshes (most notably for that kind of thing).
Then is a matter of policy: for instance you want the buildings lay in the terrain in some sort of “natural” way (meaning “excavations” - general case) or just their footprint to “touch” the 3d top skin? And if “touch” … what are the rules for that? Roads et al are a bit more challenging mind.
I have various C#'s (some are not classified) that do that sort of thing(s) but they are pure code … and unless you walk that kind of walk (or have plans to do) … well, you get the gist I do hope.
BTW: there’s various “similar” cases in this (and the old/dead way better looking Forum) so do some research.
For specificity’s sake, here are some screenshots of the big contour file that I have. The size of this rhino file that includes all the contours is 723,470 kb. (the 135mb one I mentioned (actually 156,182 kb) is a version of the full contour that had been cropped to the downtown area)
I would also prefer a 3D solid topographic model (or a brep) than a mesh, unless it starts lagging my computer.
What do you think is the best approach to creating a site model with topography and buildings? (I would like the buildings to be very simple extrusions)
I am currently been researching and asking around, and it seems people suggest Elk or Gismo…
I rather predict some pain and tears (but hope dies last). Using, say, Patch (a very tricky thingy that one) for that amount of contours … well … it’s a “bit” challenging. Also have in mind that R is a surface modeller … meaning that is rather slow VS “solid” adventures.
Warning: in case that a Del Mesh is in the agenta … have in mind that this works on “planar” (more or less) collections thus IS NOT the way for some sort of general case (i.e. steep slopes > a Jack for all trades etc etc). On the other hand a Ball Pivot … but this requires “evenly spaced” (more or less) collections blah, blah.
Anyway … do a full search for that matter first and then:
(a) 1 to 10 what is your GH experience?
(b) 1 to 10 what is your C# experience?
BTW: As I said I bake my beans solely via C# code (and I never use any plug-in [other than K2]) so I have no idea what Elk and the other one do. Meaning that I may be the worst person imaginable to outline a working (and fast) strategy on that matter.
The main difference between Elk and Gismo, perhaps, is that, for Elk, you need to download the information yourself and point Elk to that information. Gismo needs a point of interest and will then download the information by itself.
In addition, Gismo has some tools to combine terrain and map data. In Elk, you’ll have to combine these yourself by using other Grasshopper components to project points or curves from the map to the terrain and create new objects at or move existing objects to the correct elevation.
Neither Gismo nor Elk will use the contours that you have. You could move them to the correct elevation and use the Delaunay Mesh component to create a terrain from those. Then, you will have to move Gismo or Elk buildings to the correct elevation, …
-wim
Ah I see. Thank you for clarifying the differences between Elk and Gismo. It looks like both plugins can create what I need, but Gismo may be easier for me.
What do you think are the benefits of using Elk over Gismo, and vice versa? Is one more detailed/accurate than the other? Is Gismo more limiting than Elk in the solids/forms, etc. that it creates?
As for the contours, we used a simple grasshopper script to create a srf (I think), but I don’t necessarily need to use the contours that I have.
Both use external data that neither those plug-ins nor you have any control over. Other than that, they both use the same geometry functions that are available in Rhino.
-wim
Hi Clonosis,
I wanted know if the roads generated in your fine were from elk? If so, how were the offset curves cleaned up to look more polished like in cadmapper?
