Drop to surface

Are you familiar with the Sketchup script that drops objects to a surface? You place object above the surface and it drops objects to intersecting points on the surface below.

Is there someone who has a working module that would do the same or could you give me ideas how to make one?

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Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on March 30, 2012 at 11:55am

Use Project to find the 3D coordinates of the Point on the surface. If you need to orient the objects normal to the surface, you can evaluate the surface at the projected point.

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Permalink Reply by taz on March 30, 2012 at 12:27pm

Are you trying to simulate the Rhino Drape command?

You could simulate this with Kangaroo:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/kangaroo/forum/topics/collidesur...

Also, as Hannes mentions you can play with projection:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/mesh-projection-culling

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Permalink Reply by Johann Magnus Kjartansson on March 30, 2012 at 12:39pm

No not the drape function...

Imagine having a 3D terrain model, then you have a 2d model of the trees of that area in a single plane, then I would want to use this script to drop the trees down and they would "land" on the surface below...

Think Hannes is on it there, I will try it. Really thought there would be an existing discussion about this matter since it is a very common thing for architect models. I use it often in Sketchup but Im trying to stay away from that program ;)

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Permalink Reply by Johann Magnus Kjartansson on March 30, 2012 at 12:42pm

In my case the "trees" are circles, so I can use Grasshopper to place tree blocks in the center of the circles, then I want to drop these 3D trees down to the terrain surface...

Just to avoid confusion, I dont want to project the 2D lines, that I can easily do within Rhino of course...