Hardscape

[alfresco]

I have a site model with residence and hardscaping in place. The property has some slope. I would like to place an existing driveway but am unable to place the driveway with the sloping grade? The driveway has varying grade. Can a reasonably accurate driveway be placed on the site model?

[Ozzie]

This driveway is built firstly with a 2D poly converted to nurbs ungrouped and individual vertices set to height

I then used Loft Surface after many tries to create the group of nurbs

Ungroup them and select all - add solids - gives a solid

Problem is when rendered the lines across it I cannot get rid of even after setting Line Render Options in View/Rendering/Line Render Options to 60 degrees

Can anyone show us how to achieve a smooth render with this in Artistic Renderworks and a tutorial on how to achieve a perhaps better driveway with a thickness

[mmyoung]

Ozzie,

If I had Landmark (as Alfresco does), I would make a TIN (a "Triangulated Irregular Network") with my surveying points, from which it is much easier to make a plausible surface from a point cloud than it is with NURBS surfaces.

Without LandMark, as you suggest, you'd like to make the model using NURBS surfaces. Bunch of ways to do that. I'm not precisely sure what you are seeing in your imagination, so here's a guess.

I began by tightening up the existing model to eliminate overlaps and address the low corner of the intended driveway. Executive decision... ha ha. It's easier to edit NURBS curves that surfaces, so do as much editing as you can before surfacing your curves.

You are aiming at making a set of NURBS surfaces which correspond to your surveyed data points. To do this with NURBS, I would lay in my data points using 3D loci: Pop in a locus, then edit it coordinates in the OIP. Draw NURBS curves through the loci and make surfaces.

You could also make interpolated surfaces, which are guaranteed to intersect all the data points, but getting the UV lines oriented well to your data points would be difficult.

[Ozzie]

Thanks so much Michael

I can use the DTM very well but as Alfresco was I think suggesting pads can only fall in one direction - I have been down this path lots of times

As an example a sloping driveway where we have a double garage maybe one metre above the bottom foot path level

So the drive at the garage end either side is the same level - other end footpath if it slopes down one side of the drive to the other - pads are useless

Often too on one side of the drive you may have a path going to the house or even a set of stairs and the base of these stairs needs to be level also so you need to model it in 3D and sit it on top of the site model

I will try your methods and attempt to learn better 3D modelling skills and let you know

Thanks again and BTW I have Landmark also

[mmyoung]

Thanks Ozzie,

Yeah I forgot you had Landmark. Great comments, helps me understand what you are seeing and what sort of things arise in this kind of work.

I'd like to get Landmark. Seems like a lot of application for TINs, as well.

all the best?

[Jonathan Pickup]

If you have Architect, you can make a site model (TIN)