AREAL3D offers a small collection of simple symbolic elements for outdoor areas for a quick placement and calculation.
You can place single elements (leftclick), rows (2-points), belts, squares and circles. New elements will be placed on the highest terrain or element (yet the routine detects the description of those elements and does not place trees on buildings or waterplanes, for example).
Belt, Rows, Circles and Squares are indicated via temporary construction grid.
This grid can be modified during the P2P input process.
All outdoor elements will automatically adapt to the terrain, as soon as it is changed by AREAL-tools (if the function is not switched off in the preferences).
Trees on ,waterplanes' and ,street areas' will be deleted.
In small projects this works very fast, in larger projects it may be useful to switch the automatic adaptation off. Then you can adapt the elements to terrain manually and anytime by pressing the button on the toolbar.
SINGLE ELEMENTS:You can place single AREAL3D-object anywhere in the model with a single click.
You can use SHIFT+LEFTCLICK to place a random group of elements.
On street-areas or water planes no elements will be placed.
Context:
Rows : ON/OFF
Shape : rectangular or circular
Controlls:
Keys L/R : scale
CTRL/TAB : rotation
ROWS / ALLEYS:Place a row of the selected element (context menue) with 2 clicks anywhere in the model.
Elements will only be placed on drawing elements like faces or groups or components.
After the row was placed, all elements will automatically be placed on the highest surface in the model.
AREAL3D-buildings, AREAL3D-streets & walkways and AREAL3D-waterplanes will be ignored,
so in most cases the result will be realistic.
You can place up to 5 parallel rows at the same time. Adjust amount of rows and distance in the context menu.
Besides that you can randomize distance, rotation and side offset of elements within rows by setting the values in the context menu.
Node elements can be 'hilited' by separate scale values.
Controlls:
Keys L/R :
Keys U/D : Tree type
CTRL/TAB : grid
For quick variation of rows in realtime you can
- enter point 1
- enter point 2 with
- ALT for variable distance
- ALT+SHIFT for variable distance and variable height
- ALT+CTRL for variable distance, height and offset along the line
BELTS:Draw a P2P belt full of active elements, randomly placed.
Adjust the width of the belt with Keys L/R.
SQUARES AND CIRCLES:Select a desired form and your input option in the context menu and create
squares or circles of trees (by side-length, diagonal length, diameter or radius).
With the distance factor as well as with the polygon-precision you have a certain influence on the distance between the elements (but very offen things happen automatically).
Note: The contruction-preview for some forms ar WIP at the moment
REMOVING ELEMENTSEspecially with the tool activated it is useful to be able to delete without closing the tool.
Simply zoom in and SHIFT+left-click on an object to delete it.
There is also a batch selection (by type) available from the context menu. Then delete via sketchup shortcut.
LAYER-SYSTEMThe AREAL3D layer system provides a separate layer for each AREAL3D-tree and light.
Objects will be automatically placed on 'their' layer.
If objects were moved to other layers and are not included in any parent group/component,
the 'COLLECT'-function in the AREAL-
selector can bring them all back to the corresponding areal-layer.
This is important for you, if you want to use the
'node-export' function for trees and lights (especially designed for node-file export to lumion), where the elements are exported layer by layer.
Here a separate node-file will be created for each tree. You can then assign different trees in LUMION for every imported node-file.
PLANNED FUNCTIONS- Locking function for outdoor elements
- Element change / replace from context menu (test version >> context >>
Replace elements)
