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Draw Ground


gsathre83

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How do you draw a ground/plane in order to cast shadows onto etc.. and just have a ground on you house. pleaaaaasssse help.

G

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i just tried the planesurf command and it says it was invalid is there anyway to get to it in the pull down menu.

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when i go to draw in the pull down menu i have the option of "surfaces" so i went to that and then i have. 2d solid, 3d face, 3d surfaces, edge, 3d mesh, revolve surfaces, tabulated surfaces, ruled surfaces, and edge surfaces. Any ideas

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its says ur using autocad 2007 in ur profile but if u dont have that menu then i assume ur using a previous version, yeh?

u could draw a "3d face" instead

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There are also other things you can do to give the ground more lifelike terrain. For example, you could make a series of polylines and occasionally alter their elevations. (much like a topographical map). You could then draw a planar surface over the whole thing using the polylines as a guide. That way you end up with a more realistic terrain. My advanced autocad teacher had us do this same exercise 3 or 4 years ago by picking part of a topographical map and tracing the raster image with polylines. At the end, we all put our work together and had a finished topo map with accurate elevations.

(there are easier ways of doing that with other software though).

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ok so to change the elevations of the polylines do i just change the thickness? or is there and change elevation command i should know about, and also what is the command to get to this planar surface, what i am doing right now is, doing a 3D face but its's just flat and looks pretty lame.

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ok so to change the elevations of the polylines do i just change the thickness? or is there and change elevation command i should know about, and also what is the command to get to this planar surface, what i am doing right now is, doing a 3D face but its's just flat and looks pretty lame.

 

 

NO NO. don't worry about thickness or anything like that. Easiest way to do it imo is probably just to select the line, right click and select properties. Go down to where it sais "geometry" in the properties box and you will see "Elevation" on the left. If you want it to be at 40' just type that in. It doesn't have to be a closed polyline to do this either.

 

I attached the DWG I mentioned in my last post so that you could see how it works. It was with an old educational version so it will prompt you before it opens...We each had a specific square to do. We traced the topo-map lines with a polyline. After all the lines were drawn, we then gave each the elevation specified on the map for that line. If you look at this drawing with the 3d orbit you can see how it ended up looking. This is one example of how to do this, but since you're just doing it for aesthetics really it doesn't have to be so detailed..

 

-Chris

TOPO-Square-Baker-2.dwg

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ah chris, thats great....so i completely get the elevation command so now..... what is the correct "surface" that i use to contour to my polyline elevations.

-garrett

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I should probably make a side note that creating terrain from scratch in autocad is alot of trouble and effort compared to other methods. Civil3d is superb for doing that kind of work, as is VIZ and others. The problem with autocad is that there really isn't a way to create the terrain while making it actually look like terrain. Alot of people use meshes (commands like rulesurf and edgesurf) to create terrain in autocad because it's the easiest way. The problem is that it is still not easy for a normal novice CAD operator to do it from scratch.

 

I could go about telling you step by step how it all works, but the easiest thing to do is get a plug-in for autocad that will create the terrain for you (that will solve your problem without having to get viz or civil3d).

 

I found one plugin simply called "Terrain" for autocad. You can download it here and it is free:

http://terrain-for-autocad.sycode.alienpicks.com/

 

I just found this discussion from the autodesk forums and thought it was applicable also:

http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?threadID=462090

 

-ChriS

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There is also a new google earth utility for autocad called the "google earth extension" utility. It allows you to select terrain from google earth and it will import it into autocad and layover a 3d mesh over the terrain. The elevations all remain intact as they are in google earth. From what I've read you will need any 2008 autodesk software. I don't think it works with earlier versions.

The program also draws a texture over the 3d mesh which includes the terrain from the area in google earth you selected.

 

See more here:

http://www.cadforum.cz/cadforum_en/qaID.asp?tip=5593

 

You can select any terrain on the planet now and directly import the terrain into cad..

check this picture out LOL:

geext.jpg

 

-ChriS

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Something more simpler is using the LOFT command on your elevation lines..

 

See the attached dxf file.

 

It contains two examples, the elevation polylines as well as a lofted version.

 

You can see the polylines are closed.

 

Then you loft them in order that you'd like.

 

Give it a nice colour, and place your building/house/items on the terrain.

loft.dxf

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wow, that Google earth thing is wild. i have to definetely figure that out and i will play around with that loft one. For some reason the file didn't go threw but i'm savy as hell so ill figure it out. I'm having some major roof problems right now, i'll back to you when i can come up with a clear question. Talk soon- Garrett

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  • 2 years later...

when i import google image from import ge mesh command that image inser in autocad 0,0 i want to insert that image on real coordinate

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rajrehman,

 

Real coordinates have to be located to a site location. Say, 152.00000, -27.0000 would equal 0,0 in cad. But you will have the problem of the earth being curved so over longer distances the measurements would be inaccurate.

 

 

when i import google image from import ge mesh command that image inser in autocad 0,0 i want to insert that image on real coordinate
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