Simplifying Terrain Geometry into planes

Hi All,

Does anyone know of a tool/addon/component which could take exported terrain geometry and turn it into larger planes (therefore less surfaces) in order to create simplified meshes for Computational Fluid Dynamic analysis?

We want to evaluate the wind flow around a terrain to determine the best spot to locate a group of buildings, however the terrain is quite large and detailed and I do not want to have to try tackle manually drawing in planes to simplify it.

Any recommendations would be appreciated =)

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 2, 2017 at 2:02am

Have you tried the ReduceMesh command in Rhino? It pays attention to local detail, so it first combines those faces that do not contribute much to the overall shape.

Another option would be to use the Delaunay component to create a new landscape from a subset of points in the original landscape, or even to drape a square mesh grid onto your existing landscape. It all depends on whether you'd rather have quads, triangles, repeating patterns or adaptive faces.

Permalink Reply by Elzine Braasch on August 2, 2017 at 6:03pm

Hi David, thanks for your response!

My first barrier is converting the curves from the contour map into making the landscape itself a surface rather than a series of lines. But the surfaces created need to be planar, they can't be a twisted square surface for example.

I'll have a look at Delaunay :)

Permalink Reply by 0ddw589ypu3jv on August 2, 2017 at 9:36pm