How to model a terrain

Hi, I wanted to know the best workflow and best practices to model a terrain such as this.

This is a famous cliffside along the hudson river so I assume that contour lines and topography data would be available. What would be the best way to model something like this. Where can i find dwg or other files to extract elevation data and then effectively model this.

All help appreciated. Thanks!

Hi @Kaamil_Hasan_Dahodwa ,
I realize you didn’t tag this topic with Grasshopper, but if you are able to use it, there are a few add-ins that could help import GIS data. Heron has some tools to access and import USGS topo data (and point clouds, if you want to take it that far).

20240903_Hudson Palisades Topo with Heron.gh (16.5 KB)

-Brian

This is great thank you, but would there be a way to convert this to a mesh surface that could be used to 3D print or extract lines and contours from?

Yes, you can bake the mesh output of the ImportTopo component and then contour it.

Amazing, Thank you!

Hey, Im trying to replicate using the script you sent me and I am getting these errors. Do you know if this is because I have not imported the data myself and only used the file you have uploaded. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kaamil

Try checking the folderPath input to make sure it’s a valid location on your computer. Also, make sure the boundary curve is appropriately scaled (ie 100 m, not 100 mm)

-Brian