This comes up continuously in the sketchup forum - ie the best way to do this. Below is some of the ideas that I have made notes on over the years - I think that this is a case where a mesh modeler is better than nurbs, but Michael's suggestion that you use rhino with the delaunay plugin is probably the best shot if you want to stay in nurbs.
Also, in your original post you mentioned exporting via something out of autocad as pdf, and importing that into moi - I don't think this is a good idea, as you will get heaps of little lines, whereas if you export as step or something it should be much cleaner, or use rhino which has very good dwg and dxf import...(you can download rhino and use it forever free, it just wont save your work after 25 saves - you can also just copy and paste through to moi, but only 25 times)
Anyway, for what its worth see below for ideas...you might also search the sketchucation forum for "terrain", "tin" and the like - there will be heaps of info there...
(just a note - you will see people talking about "ruby" or "rb" in conjunction with sketchup - these are plugins that people have coded to do various tasks - some of them are very elaborate, most of them are free...)
good luck
rabbit
I have an acad site plan and survey with topography of site. What is the simplest way to get this terrain accurately into sketchup, to enable me to place buildings on it.
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- Do A Save as on the original acad file, Keep the original, original.
edit the new file and get rid of the stuff you wont be needing, like lot dimensions, notes, etc.
Open a fresh SU screen, select import, and select the file.
after it is in Su and saved, use Weld to connect the topo segments into each topo line, and while you are selecting those segments and get tired of missing the selection, the SelectionMemory2 ruby is right on.
After all your topo lines are welded, move them in the blue axes your intended distance.
after the topo is elevated use smoove to get the skin.
When you have site objects to transfer to the topo, leave them at work plane (flat) and project them up to the topo surface.
You can project the building from below or take the footprint above and stamp it to the surface.
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- If the topo file is all choppy lines, etc. - I have had the most luck by the following steps;
1- deleting everything you don't need in the copy of the cadd file and flattening the contour lines
2- import file with just contour lines (x-ref ruby works nicely)
3- trace over contours using bezier spline ruby ( find it in the repository here)
4- delete cad file and edit the splines as you need to to simplify, etc.
5- move the splines to correct elevation
6- sandbox tools from here.
Seems like a lot of work if you already have the cad file with contours at specific elevations - but my experience has been that this is much cleaner and produces a better contour mesh. Install the rubies and give it a try on a little section. While I am proficient in cadd - I still find that the cleanup and work in sketchup to be much faster than "fixing" choppy or complicated contours in a cad file. Also - you have much more control over the level of detail, and can simplify where it is appropriate.
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Note also that cloud.rb (or cloud_V6 for SU 6) also creates faces but from xyz data in text files. Just perfect with survey data (I use it a lot for reconstructing archaeological layers
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