Scanned Elevations to 3D

[Brolloks]

Hi

 

I've placed this under General, but the software used will most likely be Viz2005/2006 unless you have better solutions..

 

I have scanned and printed (to scale) coloured elevations of several buildings that need to be modelled in 3D. I have a CAD base plan to work from, but I'm looking for a fairly fast way of converting the plans to 3D. Normally I would scale from the prints and build the parts in 3D...

 

Any other tips or tricks? (Apart from putting up a plane and mapping the scans to it )

[bjornkn]

I don't use Viz, but as you ask for better solutions...

In SketchUp this would be a piece of cake.

Import all your images into SU.

Draw a line on top of one of the images, which should be a known length on the elevation. Then use the measure tool from end to end, and enter the real measuer - SU scales all your elevations to the right scale (if they're all in the same scale that is..)

Then you rotate them and align them around your building.

Next step is to make a simple box inside that "fence", and apply/project the images on the walls. Now you can delete (or put on hidden layers) the images and just start modelling the building. Extrude a wall outwards and you reveal more of your elevations, add edges and push/pull.

The attached image shows an example from a project I'm working on right now. It's really just an interior project, but because SU is so fun to use I couldn't resist adding more detail on the exterior than neccessary

The source images were really bad 1-bit scans from hand drawn pencil elevations.