• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Determining the right size

Skippy2

Skippy2

Messages
116
Country
netherlands
Hi,

I often design objects for sceneries and i usually hear that the buildings are massive. Therefore my question is how can you define the scale of the object ?

Maybe it sounds stupid i'm sorry but i cannot see it myself during designing until it gets into the scenery later on...

Best Regards,

skippy
 
I'm not sure what you mean....

Do you mean how to make the buildings the correct size? I use google earth's ruler tool to measure buildings so I can make them the correct size.
EDIT: As for the height, use birds eye view and sort of guess...
 
Last edited:
Skippy2 said:
Hi,

I often design objects for sceneries and i usually hear that the buildings are massive. Therefore my question is how can you define the scale of the object ?

Maybe it sounds stupid i'm sorry but i cannot see it myself during designing until it gets into the scenery later on...

Best Regards,

skippy
Click to expand...

If your referring to buildings, meaning more than one, you might want to considering doing them one at a time,.. if your referring to the actual size of the building and getting the right measurements for such, you can refer to the above suggestion.

and trust me there is no such thing as a stupid question,...
 
Although I don't use Sketchup for scenery, I have played with it a bit, and I think that you can use 'geo-location' to grab a background from Google Earth, and build on top of it, so the size should always be accurate.
 
Hi,

I would also use the Google Earth background image, it is a good help to make sure the size is about right.

It is better to design your objects to scale, than to scale them later when placing. That gives troubles with crashboxes, attached platforms, autogen exclusion, etc.
 
In the beginner tutorials, it shows you how to set the size of an object when you create it (type in the dimension(s) and press Enter, as I remember).
 
Thank you all for the great idea ! I now manage to build objects according to the exact size :D
 
Older thread, but have a suggestion for accurately sizing google map images if you dont want to model in g-earth then import, basically its useful for timesaving,
import your screenshot of the map, draw a 50, 100, 200ft line to match the measuring line on the maps bottom left corner, then scale and set to the correct size. Now you have the map correctly sized, and its just faster imo to do all the modeling in sketchup vs working in google earth then importing to sketchup.

Unless im missing something.
 
To expand on my previous post, which referred to Google Earth, but really it's all done from Sketchup:

Within Sketchup, File: Geo-location: Add location.
The 'add location' window will open, zoom into the area you want, and click on 'select region' and adjust the pins to fine-tune. Click on 'Grab' and you'll return to SU with the background image automatically sized and reprojected.
 
toprob said:
To expand on my previous post, which referred to Google Earth, but really it's all done from Sketchup:

Within Sketchup, File: Geo-location: Add location.
The 'add location' window will open, zoom into the area you want, and click on 'select region' and adjust the pins to fine-tune. Click on 'Grab' and you'll return to SU with the background image automatically sized and reprojected.
Click to expand...

I remember doing this a few times. Had issues with large selection areas, but that was a version or 2 ago. Any idea what the area limitation is?

Its still limited to a 2 mile square. The overlap from repeating grabs seems difficult to accurately do.

I really want to learn to use these mapping programs I keep reading about, the shapefiles and osm files and such. Only issue is, not much available on HOW to get them. Plenty of arrows pointing where to get the things, but not how to get them once you get there.
Earth Explorer for example, Which map type do I need for a photo-real map? Its a question I will have to explore further once I get about 200 more models added to my scenery.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top