Aligning 3D Context with Site Terrain

[c_shaller]

I saw one post from early 2023 about this, but wanted to throw it out there in case something new has come up.

I just recently started learning FormIt in the past few weeks, and the Site Terrain + 3D Context tools seem incredibly useful, but they do not seem to play well together.

Has anyone found a solution to automatically align the masses from 3D Context to Terrain other than adjusting each mass individually? I can see this becoming a tedious issue down the road if in a dense area with lots of surrounding buildings.

Enjoy the reference picture below of my 3D Context buildings, half buried and half floating 🙂 Thanks in advance!

[josh.goldstein · Accepted solution]

Hi @c_shaller,

Thanks for reaching out!

Indeed, this is an unfortunate gap. Our apologies.

Do you have any experience with Dynamo? It's certainly possible to write a quick script that gets the bottom centroid of each building, projects it onto the terrain, then uses that vector to move each building. This would result in a new group of buildings, so the original set would need to be hidden.

Of course, depending on the slope of the terrain, even this would result in some buildings being partially buried or partially floating, if you use the bottom centroid of the building. Lots of ways to do it, but this is one approach that comes to mind.

[c_shaller]

Thanks @josh.goldstein!

Good to know I wasn't missing anything in the program at least 🙂 I've never used Dynamo, but could definitely give it a try for a workaround.

[josh.goldstein]

Not sure if you're looking into Dynamo, but you might take a look at our help center page on FormIt + Dynamo.

I'm also happy to help if you get something started and need guidance for next steps.

[c_shaller]

Thanks, I will definitely take a look at the page! We've been looking at some way to up our technology game in the office, and anything will help. 

Worth noting that I tried the same location in Forma, and it brought 3D context wayyy more in line with the terrain than in FormIt. So good to know that there are a few options depending on what you want to do with it.