I am going to do a project in which I have to model existing terrain in Solidworks and then split the terrain in layers in order to laser cut it and make the model. Any advice on how to approach this. Also does anyone know where I can get my hands on an elevation set?
Well what I am planning to do is to make a 3D model of a rectangluar area of terrain. The terrain is mostly flat. I was thinking of splitting up the 3d model into layers of about 20ft each. But First of all I don't know where to get the data. I've been hearing about ArcII files...
Jorge,
Terrain data is generally available in 3 formats, 16-bit elevation, triangles, or pointclouds and its relatively easy to convert between those types.
SolidWorks, however, is a nurbs modeler, and while it can import STL or other triangulated files, they must be imported as solid bodies in order to do any sectioning. This limits the size of the model to less than 20,000 triangles.
I suggest that you look at a polygonal modeler (ie Blender) to do the sectioning. There is also a low cost program called Leveller from Daylon Graphics that can handle many terrain formats and I believe it can do the sectioning as well.
The USGS has many freely available terrain data sets. You can select the terrain data either by coordinates or by simply drawing a rectangle over the area you want on a map.
What kind of terrain are you talking about?
And i assume you want to laser cut different cross sections of the terrain?
I would google for "terrain 3D model stl"
Or look on a website like grabcad.com