Hello,
I need to model a tunnel within a terrain that I can generate either from a DEM file or contour lines. However, I haven’t been able to achieve this successfully in Lands Design.
From my research, it seems that this functionality is not yet available in RhinoLands. As a workaround, I tried projecting a surface onto the existing terrain (generated in RhinoLands), converting it into a solid, and then carving out the tunnel using a boolean difference. However, after completing these steps, if I tag the final solid as terrain, the contour lines disappear—even though the solid clearly represents a mountain.
Is there a way to maintain the visibility of contour lines and achieve an immediate 2D visualization, even when tagging an object as terrain? So far, I haven’t been able to make it work.
How can I solve this issue?
We are working on implementing that function in the next version. In the meantime, the workaround is similar to what you did, but with one difference: you can generate a mesh with a tunnel and then convert the mesh into terrain using the Generate Terrain tool.
In the command line, you will see an option to generate terrain from points, curves or from a mesh. Once the terrain is generated, you can enable both 2D and 3D views of the terrain (which shows contour lines). Simply select the terrain, and then in the edit panel, enable “Show 2D/3D.”
I tried using a mesh as you suggested, but I encountered some issues. When generating a terrain from a mesh that includes a road tunnel, the tunnel still doesn’t appear, and its entrance is sealed by the new terrain, so my problem remains unresolved. I tried both generating the terrain from a single mesh that combines the hill and the tunnel, as well as keeping them separate, but neither approach worked.
Additionally, if I try to tag the mesh as a terrain it still doesn’t show both 2D and 3D views of the terrain, so it doesn’t show contour lines.
Is there a way to extract contour lines directly from the mesh tagged as terrain (and not from the terrain generated by the mesh) so that the road tunnel opening remains intact? This would allow me to implement vegetation and pathway information with Lands Design, ensuring a direct correspondence between the 2D and 3D views while working from a single model.
Hi @marghe654 unfortunately it is not possible to create tunnels in lands design terrains, or show the countours on objects tagged as terrains. I’d generate the topography of that part of the terrain with the tunnel with Rhino geometry (I mean, not with a Lands Design terrain), and then use the _Contour command to generate the 2D contour curves on the resulting object. If you tag it as a terrain (from the Edit panel), you will get the plants and other objects be projected on their top surface automatically.
You can also generate these contours on that object using a Grasshopper definition. This way they will update if you modify that geometry.