Explore the process of creating a realistic, aesthetically pleasing model by cleaning up topography and geometry, particularly in areas like patios. Discover how to use tools like the drape tool, line tool, and push pull tool to generate flat surfaces, enclosed shapes, and retaining walls, among other features.
Key Insights
- The article presents a detailed explanation on the creation of a flat patio and a retaining wall in a model, using tools such as the drape tool for a flat surface, the line tool to close breaks, and the push pull tool to adjust heights.
- The model creator is advised to ensure that the created objects are not touching each other and to double-check for broken lines or unclosed shapes, which can be fixed by zooming in and filling in the gaps.
- In creating a retaining wall, an offset of eight inches is recommended, which is the standard size of a CMU concrete block. The article further suggests creating different breaks to create various levels of heights of different courses for the retaining wall.
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The next thing I would like to do in this model would be to clean up the topography and geometry of this north patio. If we go to View > Hidden Geometry, you can see there are all these triangulations basically connecting this slope all the way down.
We want to create a flat surface for this patio. We can use a similar process to what we did before with this planter on this patio by using the Drape tool. Go to View, uncheck Hidden Geometry, and then double click into here to where we have this as an isolated group.
So I can go to Move—actually, I want to double click into this so that way we don't see everything else—and then triple click this and Make Group. Then I will draw a rectangle underneath this as well—a large rectangle. We want this not to be touching.
We can see that there is a corner that touches, so I will actually double click this element and then move this down a bit so that way it's not touching. Then I will go into my Drape tool again and click here and then here, and then I will delete this portion and hit the Delete key. But now, as we can see, this is not an enclosed shape. If I zoom in, I can see that there are breaks in between these lines. You can do that by double clicking and triple clicking to see where these are connected and where they're broken.
I can see that there's a break right here and there's a break right here. We can manually close these by zooming in and then using our Line tool to fill in the gaps. We have end point to end point, then zooming out again and going into the other portion over here. Once I join those two, you can see that the line changed from being thick to thin, and now this is an enclosed surface.
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Now we will erase these extra lines, and there we have our flat patio. We can actually move this portion up and hit our H key to Show Rest of Model, holding down Shift and locking in the blue direction and snap it right at our clubhouse base. Now we have a flat patio directly adjacent to our clubhouse.
However, now you can see that these two surfaces don't match up, so we’ll need to create a retaining wall between the landscape and the patio. Eventually, we are going to create a sloped walkway from this corner down to this corner. But first, let's create our outline for our retaining wall. I will double click into this group, and then I'll use the Offset tool to offset eight inches from the retaining wall side, which is the standard size of a CMU concrete block.
They're eight inches by 16 inches and eight inches tall. I will type eight inches and then Enter. Now I'll go to View > Component Edit > Hide Rest of Model. I do not need all of these lines over here because I just want the retaining wall to be from here to here. I can hit H to see where I want these retaining walls to go—from here to here.
And so I can again use my Line tool and draw a line from this end point. You can see that it wants to snap along the red. We want to make sure that we hover over this line right here so we can create an extended constrained line from this angle to there. Then we'll do the same thing on this end—draw a line from this end point going along this direction, which is green, to here.
Now if I was to select this portion, you can see that we’ve broken that plane apart from these two, so now this is connected. Now I can go to my Erase tool and erase the rest of the lines. One trick—instead of going into each individual piece and deleting—you can break it off from there to here. Then you can actually double click these portions, triple click, and delete, and then triple click all of those connected elements and hit Delete.
Now we should have two surfaces—here and here. Let's make these two surfaces separate groups, so we'll double click and then triple click. We'll select everything and double click to just select the boundaries. So double click, right click, Make Group; double click, right click, Make Group.
Now we have two elements for the retaining wall. Let's move this down basically along the blue, right to this corner right here. Actually, from this point we see that this is lower right here. Now we can double click this group and hit H so we only see this. We'll move this up eight inches for one course of our concrete block. You can see that we’ve created a retaining wall along here. However, you can see that there still are some areas where this retaining wall does not reach all the way up.
We’ll need to create different breaks to form various height levels for the different courses of this retaining wall. We want to create eight-inch modules, so we can orbit around and see where it gets a little tight. We can also see where our slab is going. Maybe make a line from here to here, and then use our Push/Pull tool to push/pull this up eight inches. We can go around and see that it gets kind of tight over here, so we'll draw another line from here to here and push/pull this up eight inches. You can see it gets a little tight over here as well—we'll draw another line from here to here.
I'm just connecting a line here and another line here so that way it looks somewhat square on the top. Then I'll go to Push/Pull and push/pull this up eight inches. Now we want to lower this on the back side, so we'll draw a line from around here and then push/pull this down eight inches. Finally, we'll do a portion in the middle, right over here—we’ll go down eight inches. So there we have our retaining wall—it kind of wraps around. We can create some staggered sizes for that, and then I want to triple click this geometry and go to Soften Edges to really clean this up and drag this slider to between 15 and 20 degrees so we have a really nice, smooth retaining wall. I will hit Escape to close out of all that, and now we have a nice, simple retaining wall and a flat patio slab. In our next video, we will work on this sloped walkway as well as adding in materials to our retaining wall.
I will see you in the next video.
