Can I use archicad for Landscape?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone knows if archicad is good to use in landscape?

[Dwight]

You mean to model hard and soft landscape elements as a landscape architect would, ultimately making design communication and construction documents.

Archicad is very useful when designing 3D landscape.

Archicad's strengths in landscape are the same as for building architecture - fast logical modeling and streamlined document production.

It can model slopes, contours and other features, inserting roadways and other hard elements with ease. It can also place plant elements at the correct altitude on irregular surfaces.

Archicad has some drawbacks that most modelers have when addressing the complexities of organic form.

If you want to model accurate 3D organic trees throughout your project, this will be nearly impossible because trees have so many polygons. To maintain computer speed, architects rely on photos of trees or simple translucent spheres to depict foliage.

There is an application called Onyx Tree Pro that makes botanically accurate trees, but they have many thousands of polygons that must be used sparingly.

There is also an Archicad add-on called "ArchiTerra" that simplifies many modeling tasks when creating the model.

[Anonymous]

yes, i want to model hard and soft landscape elements as a landscape architect would, but i am trying to do it from a survey(topographic) map.
So i was wondering if there is a way to use that map to create a mesh of some sort and then start working from there?

[Dwight]

That is relatively easy to do, but you must use judgement to minimize un-useful polygons in the mesh.

[Anonymous]

But when i create the mesh base on the level curves, in 3d mode the become piramids insted of curves, and i can not find a way to round them.

[Dwight]

I'm not clear on your objective. Perhaps a sketch?

However, that's the way it goes with polygons.

If you are looking for a mesh to give you layered slabs following contour lines, not only is this not accurate, but it can't be done with a mesh.

If you want the artificial layered slab "look", you must make layered slabs....

[Anonymous]

What I meant was that i cant find a way to generate the slope in a round way, because what I am doing I designing a park proyect (based upon a real terrain), and what I seek is to make a real-based 3d render of the terrain, and to do this I have the topografic maps.

[Dwight]

The only way to see a "Smooth" terrain is in a LightWorks rendering where the mesh has been told "All Ridges Smooth". OPenGL will always show the triangulated polygons.

It is possible to constrain polygon triangulation to contour lines, but for maximum smoothness, you must use additional contours to subdivide the triangles small enough so that the terrain looks smooth even in OpenGL.

Attached is proof that it can be done.

[Anonymous]

I am going to try it, to do it rigth i must use archicad (finish all the proyect) and then ligthworks or both simultaniusly (with a feature of archicad render); and by the way, thanks, you have been very helpfull