The View Menu

The View menu hosts commands control the visibility and style of your terrain, and related objects.

View commands let you control how your terrain looks. They also let you turn terrain-driven geometry, like Water or Contours, on and off.

Most View commands are toggles. To switch between the on and off state, simply run the View command again.

Some View Commands

View includes commands that let you:

• Show terrain elevation isocurves, like View Contour.
• Hide and show terrain and non-terrain, like e.g. View Terrain and View Nonterrain. This works by tags.
• Control terrain styling, like View Edge, Face, and Profile.
• Show and hide Water, like View Water. To show water, you need to have a water item in the model.
• Show and hide terrain Skirt, like View Skirt.

Accessing View Commands

All View commands are listed in Sketchup's menu:
Extensions > Holygon Landshape > View

There is a top menu, a context menu, and a toolbar, all called "View". They contain the same commands.

Active View Commands

You can see which which View commands are currently active. This works both in toolbars and in menus.

In the toolbar "Holygon Landshape View", Sketchup highlights active views.

In the Landshape's View menus, active views are marked with a checkmark.

When you create new terrain, the new terrain will apply the current View state to the new terrain.

Rebuilding View Items

Several Views will create new geometry. Your current terrain determines the result. A terrain-driven geometry is called a View Item.

For instance – Contours, Skirts, and Waters are all View Items. Landshape will generate these for you, based on your current terrain surface.

Landshape rebuilds a View item when you turn it on. This way, you may control view items individually.

Please note that currently, for performance reasons, Landshape does not update View items in realtime. As you keep reshaping terrain, your active view items may no longer align with your new terrain shape.

However, re-aligning is easy. You can rebuild individual or all View items anytime:

Rebuild All View Items

To refresh all active View items, simply run Rebuild View.

Rebuild View will regenerate all active view items based on your current terrain surface.

To quickly refresh active View items anytime, bind Rebuild View to an accessible keyboard shortcut. Try F5.

Pro Tip

Inactive View items will not be rebuilt. You can make Landshape keep a view item by manually turning off its tag. Alternatively, to save out a view item version, for instance a set of contours, simply select it, and then assign it to a non-Landshape tag. Landshape will only rebuild view items that are on tags created and used by Landshape. This way, you stay in control.

Fine-Tuning Appearance

Some View items have parameters or values. Values let you fine-tune appearance. For instance, you can set the Contour spacing, or the minimum Skirt height.

View commands that have parameters will open the VCB when you run them individually. To change values when the VCB is open, simply type values, then hit Enter. Landshape will update the view items to reflect your changes.

Get a View of Your Own

The best way to understand View commands is to try them out yourself.

To try out View, start a new sandbox model file. This is your playground. Here, create a small terrain plot. It should not be flat, so Quake it or shape it a bit to give it differntitation and some character. Try adding a simple cuboid building, some trees, and perhaps a splash of water. Put any non-landshape item on a non-landshape tag.

Now, start exploring the View items by clicking the buttons in the toolbar "Landshape View". Since this is a playground model, you can try out new things without worrying about breaking anything.

Turn each View item on and off. Watch what happens to the model.

As you turn them on, look at the VCB. If it opens up, try changing parameters via the VCB. See how the View item changes in the model viewport.

Soon, you'll be landshaping in style.

Views Depend on Tags

Landshape will automatically tag most geometry items that Landshape creates. This includes the terrain, the skirt, water, and more. This way, you may easily control visibility per item type.

If you are using Compfire and Placify, these Holygon family extensions can automatically tag any component you import into your model.

Note that several Landshape's View commands depend on tags to work. If you change the tags for Landshape items like terrain, water, or skirt, View commands may not work as expected.

Troubleshooting View

If you a View item does not seem to do it, it is probably because it depends on something that you have not added yet.

For instance:

• To View Water, first splash Water to your model.
• To View Nonterrain, first add some non-landshape geometry to your model, like a building or a tree, and tag it.
• To View Fence, first Embed Fences to your model.
• To View Contours, first Shape your terrain. A level terrain will not have contours.

More on Views

To learn more about individual View commands, continue reading.