ArchiTerra 2 - making parking lots.. best approach?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Thanks to Fabrizo's patience and excellent responses that I have read on previous posts.. I decided to purchase ArchiTerra 2.0 for myself instead of wading through the mesh tools (I'm a newbie).. so now a bit of a question for you other ArchiTerra users.. Can you outline a process that you have found useful for producing parking lots off of main arterial streets? The site is sloping slightly and the parking lot will follow the grade instead of being completely level across. I am thinking of using the plateau tool and giving values to the angle variable.. any other suggestions?

+pablo
... G5 baby!

[Fabrizio Diodati]

Dear Pablo,

are you trying to simply draw the stripes of your parking lots (and they follow the terrain that already describes the parking lot surface) or do you need to build the parking lot surface itself?

friendly
Fabrizio

[Anonymous]

Well both eventually.. for now just the surface itself. I heard that you can make an object of the stripe and have it slightly above the parking surface below to simulate stripes.

Thanks!

[Karl Ottenstein]

Pablo wrote:
Well both eventually.. for now just the surface itself. I heard that you can make an object of the stripe and have it slightly above the parking surface below to simulate stripes.

Thanks!

Rather than making the stripes objects, another opition is to just paint a material that has the stripes where you want them. Look towards the end of:

http://www.archispectives.com/tips/121-textures.htm




(I had posted this to the old list.)

HTH,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info Karl! I really like that approach.

Fabrizio, one more question...

I have downloaded a Digital Elevation Model (7.5min, 1:250k) data file from the USGS server.. it's HUGE! Obviously, I only want to use a portion of this and am using the Filter Distance feature to crop only the parcel of land I am interested in mapping.. right now it is trial and error trying to figure out that exact location.. is there a better way? Can I just use the Solid Operations tool to "clip" out my site from the rest of the mesh?

Thanks! Great program!!

+pablo

[Fabrizio Diodati]

Pablo,

the ArchiTerra filter works on all the points coming from your survey: it filters the points nearest to the filter value.
Unfortunatelly, from what I can figure, your need it's quite different: you need to filter all the points there are outside the requested area!

The only solution, from now, is to open the survey by using AutoCAD and crop the requested area.
BTW, you cannot perform this operation by using ArchiCAD because, ASAP you import the data you will loose the 3D info.

Please, send me this DXF file and I will make some experiment... probably there is a workaround but to be sure, I have to give a look to your file.

For the future, you provide me a great idea: I will implement this function in the next ArchiTerra update: the issue to pre-define a request area (a rectangular zone) in order to import only the points inside it.

friendly
Fabrizio

[Anonymous]

Ahh.. that explains it! I kept getting large number of imported points no matter what I kept adjusting the filters to be... That would be a great little feature on the next release because as I'm sure you know, we can download a DEM file from any quadrant (7.5 min. 1:250,000) in the contenential United States! My plan is to import this ASCII file into Architerra, crop out just the immediate area I need and add a few more contours to smooth out the mesh then create the land from that data. The reason I do this (instead of using the Civil Engineer's file) is because there is no Engineer yet! This client has some land and want to Master Plan now to see what could be done... OK, I'll send you a test file I downloaded (for free by the way) from USGS... Thanks for the help!

+pablo