Just got the plugin yesterday and want to know #team_holygon if there is a tutorial explaining how to create grade groups. I checked YouTube, but there is no specific video on this, and this was the reason I got the plugin.
Hi Vishpender –
Welcome to Holygon Community Forum!
Grade is one of Landshape’s most powerful commands.
What Grade Does
Grade forces your terrain to all the edges in your grade group. In the areas in between your input edges, Landshape will make smooth transitions.
How to Use Grade Groups
In Landshape, a Grade group is input for the Grade command.
To grade an existing Landshape terrain, make 1 grade group, preselect it, and then hit Grade. While still in the command, you can tweak the result using numeric values.
What a Grade Group Is and Requires
Currently, a Grade group must contain only raw geometry.
A Grade group is just a Sketchup group with a bunch of edges. These edges encode your vision of where you want the terrain to go. Often in relation to some built feature.
Please note that to work, a Grade group must always contain one well-formed closed edge loop. This is the operation border. If you have any other geometry in your grade group, it must be completely contained within your border.
The border marks the outer perimeter for the command. Think of this as an area filter, a mask. Inside this perimeter, your terrain will reshape. Outside of it, the terrain will remain untouched.
Usually, this border lies right on top the existing terrain. The reshaping is only done inside of it, lifting and raising it locally, and blending the effect outwards towards the border.
In addition, you may (but do not have to) add any number of edges and points also inside your grading border. This geometry inside will control the shape of your terrain inside.
For instance along the facade of a building. Or at both sides of a retaining wall. Or a plateau. Or several stepped plateaus.
This inside geometry can be whatever you want.
Please note that since Landshape is 2+1D, all your input edges should be separated in plan.
Do not have grade group edges exactly on top of each other. If you view your edge input from top parallel view, no edge should occlude any other.
Please note that Landshape does not care from where the raw edges inside your Grade group are coming from. There is nothing magical about these edges. They are just Sketchup edges.
You may draw grading edges using Sketchup’s native Line tool, Landshape Draw, a third-party spline extension, or whatever.
Landshape Grade Pro Tips
You can Grade iteratively, also when inside a grade group. Since grading does not remesh anything, it is very robust.
Where terrain feature sharpness is desired, first Embed your corresponding important grade group edges. Then embed.
The Draw command, available in Landshape Draw, has the benefit of autodropping its vertices to the terrain. This can be useful when creating a border for a Grade group.
Accessing Grade Commands
Grade is available in Landshape Pro.
Landshape Light and Landshape Free do not offer Grading from geometry input groups. But Landshape Light does offer grading via the interactive grading tool Draw Grade.
Learn More about Grading
You can learn more about Grade in the online Learn manual:
We plan to publish more youtube tutorial videos that detail the Grading workflow, including how to create grade groups.
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