Uploading shape files with elevation data

[Anonymous]

Hi, does anybody know of a way to create a 3d model of a landscape in archicad by uploading a USGS shapefile with elevation data? It will have 1000s of points because its a many square mile area. And I'm wondering if I would need to create a mesh or if I could just upload the .shx or a .dwg to easily transform it to a 3d model. Any ideas?

[runxel]

Wait, a shapefile is just 2D data. Where is the elevation data coming from?

Sadly Archicad can't read .shp files natively – even tho it is the most prevalent GIS file format.
If I got a shape file I normally just use QGis to convert it to a .dxf.

[Anonymous]

So I'm downloading the data from here: https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic/. It downloads as a zip folder with several different file types. .dbf .idx .prj .shp .shx . Does it seem possible to upload one of those and it will come in with the elevation data?

Secondly, in order to make a model I wonder if I can avoid making a mesh that requires clicking and assigning elevation data to each line, since there will be thousands of them. Any thoughts?

[runxel]

Not sure what you mean by "upload" (possibly importing into Archicad?), but none of the files will give you what you need. Those are just some kind of "extensions" to the shape file.

I saw that the platform also gives you the DEM data in some places, that's possibly what you're after.
There is a button to download a .csv, where I first thought you could import that directly with the mesh importer in Archicad, but the .csv just seems to be filled with a link where you download the actual data (?). I'm a bit confused in that regard.