Modeling Sliced Terrain from Location Data in SketchUp with Joint Push Pull and Slicer

What's up guys? Justin here with theSketchupEssentials.com back with another Sketchup Extension tutorial for you. So today I'm going to teach you how to use terrain and imagery in your models to create a sliced physical model look. Before I get started I do want to take a second and thank my supporters on Patreon. Patreon, as most of you know, is the website where you can support creators that you like on YouTube. So if you're interested in that, if you like what I'm doing on this channel, please consider supporting me at the link down below. Now let's go ahead and just jump into it. Alright, so you're going to need to have a couple extensions installed on your computer. You can get both of these for free. I will link to them in the notes below. I think that they're both in the Sketchication Warehouse. You should be able to get Joint Push Pull from the Sketchup Extension Warehouse and I can't remember if you can get Slicer from there or not. Either case, I'll link to where I got these in the notes down below. And so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to use the add location function of Sketchup to bring in some geographical data. So in this case, I've already selected an area that basically it's a mountain. And I wanted to get something that had some really good kind of terrain in it. So I've just selected that area. You can select whatever region that you want. So just find the location that you want and then you're just going to click select region. And what that's going to do is that's going to allow you to move your selection around. So move this until you get what you want and then go ahead and click grab. And what grab is going to do is that's going to bring that into your model. So you can see how now I have this image, this map of the location that I selected. And so this is flat and that's not what we want. And if you remember, Sketchup also brings in a version of this projected onto terrain data. So you're going to click on this toggle terrain button. And you can see how that takes this terrain and it adds it to 3D, basically applies the topographical data to it so that you can see the actual hills in the model. And so now what we're going to do is we're going to use the extension slicer to slice this up. But we have to do something first in order for it to work. And the thing that we have to do first is we have to make this into a solid. And so basically what that means is a solid, a solid is an item in your model that's completely enclosed. So it's something that you could like 3D print. So like for example, if I take this object and I make it a group, you can tell that it's a solid because when you click on it, it's going to say solid group. And so like for example, if there was a hole in this face and I selected it, it's no longer a solid. You can see it doesn't show up as a solid because there's a hole in it. So if I fill that back in and then I click on the object again, you can see it's a solid group and SketchUp assigns a volume to it. So we have to do that with this map. We have to give it thickness so that it's a solid so that slicer will accept it. Because like if I come in here and you're going to right click on this to unlock it so that you can actually work with it. But if you tried to run slicer right now, first of all, it's going to tell you you need to save. But then if you try to run it again, it's going to tell you the selected object is not a manifold solid. That means that SketchUp doesn't see this as a solid shape. And so there's a few different things you could try in order to make this a solid, but it doesn't always work. Like for example, you could start on the corners and draw lines down and across your model and try to get this to fill in a face, but usually that doesn't work very well, especially with this actual topographical data. So in this case, it also doesn't work very well because I'm not actually intersecting with this face. But you can see how trying to get that all lined up is challenging. What we're going to do instead is we're going to use the extension JointPushPull in order to do this. And so when you load up JointPushPull, there's a bunch of different options for push pulling multiple faces at once. Well, in this case, the one that we want is VectorPushPull. And so you're going to select VectorPushPull. That's going to give you a series of options up here. And what VectorPushPull does is it push pulls a series of faces in a direction. So like if I click and drag it, if I was to click and drag it off to on the green side, it would drag that along this side, or with the blue, it's going to drag it up and down along the blue axis. And so what we're going to do in this case, before we do this, is we want to mess with a couple different options. So there's two options that we need to worry about in JointPushPull in order to make this work. The first is the finishing. And so the finishing has two different options. So when you JointPushPull this, this is asking, what do I do with my face? So there's an option for erase original face, and there's also an option for thicken, which keeps your original face in your object. So if I was to do a JointPushPull with erase original face selected, it would push pull this face down. But you can see how my original face kind of goes away. You can see how now this push pull this down and you've got all these edges, but your original face doesn't stay in there. So that's why you want to make sure that you include the thicken option. Now if I JointPushPull this down, and I go ahead and run this, my original face is going to stay here. And so I've actually got terrain in here. And the only problem I have with this is if you look at the bottom, the bottom of this is also following the shape of this terrain. And so what we want instead is we want this to be flat on the bottom. We want this to almost be like, imagine if you were to print something off and set it on the table, we want it to be flat so it could sit on that table. And so the other option that we need to make sure that we adjust is the project shape on a plane option. And so you want to select that, because if you select project shape in a plane, as well as the finishing thicken option, and then click and drag this down, and I'm going to kind of orbit around while I'm doing this, you can see how now it's taking this entire face and it's making it flat on the bottom. So instead of following the terrain, the bottom of it is now flat. And you just want to make sure when you do this that you drag it down enough that it clears all the faces of your terrain. So I'm just going to drag it down about to right here, and I'm just going to let up. And I'm going to go ahead and fly around it real quick just to kind of preview. And it looks good, so I'm going to go ahead and click. That's going to generate my geometry. Well now what we've done is we've taken this face and we've projected it down. So now you can see that the group that's selected is actually a solid. It shows up as a solid group up here. And so now that we have a solid, we can run slicer on it and we can create slices. And so there's a few things to note on this when you do this. The first is you need to be very aware of how tall your objects are and how many slices you're going to create. Because it gets really easy to try to create too many slices and then it just spins forever and ever and ever. So like for example, this is a 1300 foot tall mountain, so you don't want to slice this into a bunch of one foot slices. Because that's going to create a ton of slices. And so probably the best thing to do to start off is to start off by creating something that won't have a lot of slices. And so what we're going to do is we're going to use slicer and you're going to go to this object for the slicing tool and it's going to give you a series of options. And in this case, you can select the different axes that you want. So you could have it slice this along the red axis, the green axis, the blue axis. In this case we want this to be the Z axis, which is the blue axis. And there's a couple other options that we want to look at. So the first one is your spacing. So that's going to be your spacing between your different slices. And in this case, if you set your spacing to be the same as your thickness, then these are just going to sit right on top of each other. So if I was to run this right now and hit OK. And in this case, do not select add outlines of adjacent slices. What that does is that basically adds the outlines on these faces, which is good if you're trying to stack everything up. So you may want to think about this differently if you create an actual physical model. But in this case, what that would do is that would create a whole bunch of extra geometry that has to generate and it has to take a lot longer. So go ahead and click no for right now. And so this is going to run in the background and this is going to slice this. And so it's basically slicing this into a series of 100 foot slices. So in this case, 1300 feet. So it ought to be about 13 slices that it creates. And you can see if you don't click in SketchUp, if you just let it work, then it'll tell you what it's doing right now. So right now it says that it's fattening the pieces. So it's going through and it's creating the pieces with that thickness. So now you can see what that did is that basically created a sliced up model. And you can see how all the different slices are sitting on top of each other, one on top of the other. And if I measure these, these are 100 feet tall. And so you can see this is kind of a simplistic view of what the mountain looked like. But if you don't want to create a lot of slices in your model, this is probably a good way to go. The other way to do it, if I undo this and I run this again, is if I set the spacing to 200 feet, then that's going to give me a 100 foot slice and then a 100 foot space between the two slices. So that'll give me even less slices, it'll give me more space. So it should go a little bit faster. It seems like this just isn't a super fast process. Probably a lot of it has to do with the actual complexity of the terrain. But you can see how what this did is this created a 100 foot slice. And then if I look up and I measure the height to the next one, it's 200 feet from the base of this one to this one. So I've got a 100 foot slice, 100 foot space, just repeating back and forth. And so one thing you could do if you ran this, and I'm going to use my spaced option just like I did before, is there's a bunch of options down here for centralization, which we're not really going to talk about very much right now. There's also add references and flatten. And so if I do add references and I do flatten, and I run those and I hit OK, this is going to take a little longer to generate. But basically what that's going to do is that's going to slice my model, and it's going to create a copy of all of that off to the side. So you could actually export this to like a CNC router or something like that to create an actual physical model. So if I look off to the side over here, and it's still working a little bit, it's probably adding the references. So if I look off to the side over here, this basically creates my flat pieces off to the side. So you can see how you've got your two base pieces in here. You've got this piece that corresponds to this piece. And I think, I'm not seeing them right now, usually what the add references tool does is it'll actually add a note for each one of these that'll show which one corresponds to which piece in your 3D model. But you can see how this could be really useful for physical model creation, that kind of thing. And so let's say, for example, that you were building something into the side of this mountain. And this isn't going to be a super good example because this is going to be a giant box. But let's say, like for example, that you built a house into the side of this mountain. Obviously a very simple house. But let's say you built a house in the side of this mountain on top of this terrain. As long as it's not merged with this group, then if you come in here and you slice this, then this'll actually be sitting on top of your slices. So let's say I set this back to 100 feet for right now, and we'll say no on references, no on flatten. And the reason you probably couldn't see the references is because the text height was only a half inch. This is a very large model, so you're going to want to run that up if you really want to see the references. But if I go ahead and click OK in here, I'm going to say no to the outlines of adjacent spaces. I'm just going to let it work for a minute. You can see how this doesn't look quite as good because of the size of these slices, but you can see how this model actually still sits in the same place. So if you had a more complex model, or probably what you'd end up doing is you'd probably end up bringing in terrain for a smaller area. But you can use this, and this could be especially powerful if you had like a 3D printed model, but you could use this to generate a CNC physical model of this. And then you could also 3D print the building and show that in the same location. Alright, so then the last thing I'm going to do, I'll go ahead and delete out my sweet example house. The last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go in here, now that I have my settings set the way that I want them, I'm going to change my spacing. So I don't want the flattened on, I don't want the references on, I'm going to go ahead and set my spacing and my thickness, we're going to try it at 25 feet. So that's going to generate roughly four times the number of slices. That's why it's important for you to know how many slices you're creating. So I know it's going to take a lot longer. So there's probably some sitting around and letting this get done that has to be done, but we'll go ahead and run it and see what we come up with. Alright there we go, so you can see that took a while longer to generate, but there's a reason for that. And the reason is you can see that generated a whole lot of extra slices and extra geometry. And my computer is still spinning just a little bit, thinking about it I guess. It says that it's done, but I still can't quite orbit around. Just realize that when you create things with this extension, what you're doing is you're generating a lot of new geometry and it takes a while. So sometimes you may just have to let it run and then kind of walk away and then come back. So that's where I'm going to end today's video, leave a comment below and let me know what you thought. Does this give you some ideas for some cool stuff you could do? I just love having that sketchup conversation with you guys. If you liked this video, please remember to click that like button down below. If you're new around here, remember to click that subscribe button for new sketchup content every week. If you like what I'm doing on this channel, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Every little bit helps, even if it's only a dollar a month. But in any case, thank you so much for taking the time to watch this, I really appreciate it and I will catch you in the next video. Thanks guys!