Creating Topography from Scratch in SketchUp: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating Detailed Topography Using the From Scratch Tool in SketchUp

Discover how to build a topography from scratch using Sandbox Toolbar in SketchUp. This tutorial will guide you through creating a topography file, adjusting grid spacing, importing architecture components, and using the Smooth Tool to create a natural landscape.

Key Insights

  • The Sandbox Toolbar's From Scratch tool is used to create a new topography file in SketchUp. The tool allows you to define the origin point and dimensions of your topography, with an automatic grid spacing of 10 feet.
  • The Smooth Tool can be used to adjust the topography, creating natural landscapes. By adjusting the radius and height, you can create a range of topographical features from sharp pyramids to gradual hillsides.
  • The tutorial also guides you through importing architecture components into your topography and applying image textures to your landscape. This allows you to visualize the landscape in a more realistic way, even as you continue to modify the topography.

Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.

So in this video, we will build topography using the From Scratch button in the Sandbox Toolbar. From Scratch is this one right here.

So first, let's save our file, our topography from image, and let's go to File, Open, and then let's open topographyfromscratch.skp. You will see the same starting view for topography from scratch as we did with topography from image. So let's go to our topography from scratch button here at the top. Let's click this.

Let's select our origin point first. So as you can see, when you're drawing out, it's not like the rectangle tool where it'll kind of show you the preview of the rectangle. This tool, you have to type in one direction first and then the second.

You see in the tool tips is select the second corner of the sandbox, shift locks the direction of the line, and then input the length of the line as desired. If you hold down shift, it'll kind of lock the distance or the direction. So let's go in this direction and let's type in, in the red direction actually, let's type in 180 feet.

And then now you can start seeing that there's a grid that's starting to appear in the green direction. We want this one to be 150 feet, so 150 enter. The from scratch tool has an automatic grid spacing of 10 feet between each of these little squares.

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If we wanted to change the grid spacing, we would need to type in a different amount, which is down here, grid spacing, before we drew our new top row surface. I am happy with 10 feet, so we don't need to redraw our topo surface. I will now go to the select tool, select this group as the topo from scratch automatically groups the topography.

I will right click, explode. Next, let's go to file, import, and let's bring in our community park architecture components. We'll click this and import.

This will be in your skp101 file downloads folder that we just did in our topography from image lesson. We'll do import, wait for it to load, and once it loads, click on this corner for our origin. So I brought these in just so we have some sort of reference to what we're drawing and modeling.

Now let's orbit around to the back side of this topography. And the tool that we are going to use is going to be the smooth tool. This is called loft or depress faces.

When you select the smooth tool and hover over our top surface, you will see a snap point in a red circle that is around the snap point. You can see in the tool tips menu below that it says click to select the base point of the smooth or type a new radius for the smooth. The radius is currently set to 30 feet.

You can see that in the bottom right hand corner of our measurements toolbar. I will type in 20 feet instead. You can see that now that red circle decreased in size.

By clicking on an end point with the smooth tool, you will see yellow dots appear. These dots will be the vertices of our existing toposurface. And as I move my mouse up and down, you will see that the smooth tool will move these points in proportionally less distance as you get further away from the center.

I can drag this point up and you will see that the smooth tool will create kind of a pyramid type shape. If I undo and type 50 feet, now this becomes a much more kind of gradual bulge of a more natural hillside landscape. And then again, if I undo this and click escape and type in say 70 feet, this will be even larger.

And from here, I will select this back corner and I want to gradually move this corner up. It should create a nice kind of hillside in that corner. Orbiting around, let me change this to 60 feet.

And I will go over here and I will do the similar thing to kind of start creating some backside topography. Now I will change this to 50 feet, kind of working my way down to make this hillside feel very natural and organic. The smooth tool will also allow you to grab edges and faces as you work through a model.

You can grab a face like this or even an edge or a face. And they all kind of work the same. Let's play around with your toposurface adding small hills and bumps.

Maybe I will change mine now to 20 feet, a little bit smaller so I can play with some more detailed topography around. Get this corner to bump up a little bit. This is a nice tool if you don't have any existing topography site plan but you want to kind of create a general shape.

One thing to note is whenever you do this tool, it will be perpendicular to the angles. It won't be vertical essentially. If you do it on a corner, it will be vertical.

But if you do it on an edge, it will either be vertical or sometimes it will be perpendicular. I will go to my select tool and end this task. Next, I will move over to this part of my toposurface to show you an aspect of the smooth tool.

You do not need to do this part but just watch. I will open up my smooth tool and then click this box here. I will make sure my radius is now set to 10 feet.

Then clicking this, I will pull this up to say 15 feet. You can see now in my tool tips that once I click on an edge right here, that shift equals smooth perpendicular to the selection. If I was to hold down shift, I can move this in perpendicular.

If I unheld shift, it would go vertical. This is another way to manipulate these surfaces in unique ways. I will click escape and undo this.

I have found for the most part that my smooth works very well in the blue direction. But if you need to move in the perpendicular direction, hold shift to toggle that change. I will now orbit around my model so I can see everything like this and I will hit save.

Next, let's bring in our image texture again similar to what we did with the topography from image file. We will do create new texture. With the new create material, we will change this name now to site plan.

Then click the use texture image button to find our siteplan.jpg in our skp101 file downloads folder. Click open. We will adjust our dimensions again to 180 feet.

Then unclick the aspect ratio and select this at 150 feet. Select ok. Let's next triple click this geometry, soften edges to around 50 to 55 degrees.

Now let's create our rectangle above this to project our material onto. We will go to our rectangle tool, hover over this origin so we inference this blue line. Then drag it up and having it in this blue shaped rectangle, let's change this dimension to 180 feet comma 150 feet.

Enter. Now, let's go to our paint bucket tool and let's paint this material. Making sure that our fountain is on the left.

We will then right click, texture projected. Then holding ALT to eyedrop this material, we then can paint this surface. We will double click this and then hit the delete key to erase that file or that image.

Now, we can see that we have a nice texture image on our topography. We can continue using our smooth tool, say we change this to 50 feet, with this image without affecting the actual geometry. This allows us to edit our toposurface while seeing what the actual landscape would look like.

Again, I will orbit my model and save my file. Alright, so in the next video, we are going to talk a bit more about topography, but primarily with geolocation in SketchUp and how that can affect our model. I will see you in the next video.

photo of Derek McFarland

Derek McFarland

SketchUp Pro Instructor

Over the course of the last 10 years of my architectural experience and training, Derek has developed a very strong set of skills and talents towards architecture, design and visualization. Derek grew up in an architectural family with his father owning his own practice in custom home design. Throughout the years, Derek has had the opportunity to work and be involved at his father's architecture office, dealing with clients, visiting job sites, and contributing in design and production works. Recently, Derek has built up an incredible resume of architecture experiences working at firms such as HOK in San Francisco, GENSLER in Los Angeles, and RNT, ALTEVERS Associated, HMC, and currently as the lead designer at FPBA in San Diego. Derek has specialized in the realm of architectural design and digital design.

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