Some Basic Landshape Concepts
Landshape Is 2+1D
Landshape terrain exists in full 3D space.
But the terrain properties may also be fully captures as a 2D plan, where every point has a 1D height dimension. Most interesting terrain properties may be expressed in 2D, plus a height dimension. Sometimes, this approach is called 2½D. A better name is 2+1D.
A Useful Abstraction
The 2+1D way of working is a useful abstraction. This approach enables treating plan and elevation as two independent properties.
This approach makes it simpler to edit with digital terrain. It gives you more time to do better work.
As in architecture, the plan drives the results. This is because humans are humans, and live on Earth. If we had wings, like angels, or lived in space station, the plan would be less important.
It's All about Connecting
In practice, most data is useless. By abstracting way less relevant properties, we narrow down the problem space to a few essentials. Working with and controlling essentials lets you focus on expressing your ideas, rather than on micromanaging the technology in between.
It is all about connecting. Good software is about connecting. Good software bridges the space between your idea and its expression. This is what good software is about. This is what Landshape is aiming to be.
The Pinboard Analogy
You may think of Landshape terrain as an infinitely elastic rubber membrane, fastened on top of a pinboard. On this pinboard, you are free to push pins any distance up or down. Your are also free to add or remove pins anywhere on the board. But you cannot move pins sideways.
No Terrain Overhangs
In Landshape, terrain can never fold over itself. Landshape will not allow you to create terrain overhangs, caves, or vertical walls.
Landshape supports any slope as long as it is under 90°.
Communicate with Terrain via Reusable Geometry Groups
Pick commands are one of the core ways way to communicate with terrain in Landshape.
In Landshape, Pickers work by expecting selected reusable geometry groups is input. The input is also known as control groups. These groups contain edges and faces. Use control groups to drive the terrain results.
In this way, you can impose your vision onto the terrain. And you can do it using standard Sketchup geometry, like points, edges, faces, and surfaces. Moreover, you can reuse them again and again, at various stages in your design.
Read more about Pickers.
No Need to Select the Terrain
The terrain is always implicit in Landshape operations. You never need to select the terrain to affect it. Selecting terrain is never required. Instead, you use separate control groups to communicate with the terrain.
Conversely, if you happen to select terrain as input to a Landshape command that edits terrain, don't worry. Landshape will automatically exclude the terrain from your input.
💡– Note that a few special commands, like Noise, Smooth, Quake and Smash do let you select a terrain plot as input. This bypasses the need for a separate control group. If you wish to smooth the terrain, you don't need to first create a big rectangle group that covers the terrain. You just preselect the terrain. This is an exception to the general rule. For these commands, however, it is required that you preselect only one terrain, and nothing else, before running the command. This pattern mitigates accidental terrain inclusion when selecting standard local control groups.
🌱 ...this Learn section is still incomplete. Expect more content in a future Landshape update. Keep Landshape updated and check back soon.