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Make A DTM and Drape An Image MicroStation Pre-V8i - AskInga Community Wiki - AskInga - Bentley Communities
Make A DTM and Drape An Image MicroStation Pre-V8i - AskInga Community Wiki - AskInga - Bentley Communities
MicroStation pre-V8i
This tutorial shows how you can create a digital terrain model from elevation data without the need for add-
on software. We'll then go through the process of how you can drape an aerial photograph over the resulting
DTM using only the tools found in MicroStation. Way cool!
Thank You!
With many thanks to the following folks who contributed to this article:
Jorge Ramis for providing and posting a spanish translation of this article.
Refer to: http://www.geocities.com/jorgeramis/Ask_Inga_Make_DTM.htm
Ron Jones from The WSDOT Design visualization Group for spoting an error and providing the correct
information for an update to the article.
Peter Bekkers and Rudi Wells for providing the idea by posting a question on the 3D discussion group.
Greg Owen from Universal Geosystems for generously providing the dataset and for challenging me to make
this article more than I had intended to. :-)
The aerial photograph was purchased from Tarin Resource Services, an industry leader in providing quality
aerial photo products.
The DEM data used to process the elevations was obtained from AltaLIS, providers of accurate digital
mapping data for Alberta.
Also thanks to Bentley's Dave Assaf and Ron Jones from The WSDOT Design Visualization Group for
providing additional technical content and support.
Create a new level - you might want to call it DTM for Digital Terrain Model.
Make this your active level, and set the active colour to 0.
Put all the points in a selection set.
Key in mdl load facet;facet dialog
You will be rewarded with the following dialog:
This little known dialog has been around for a while and is absolutly full of tools designed for creating slick
3D surfaces including a DTM from points, cells, or text. Since we're going to create a digital terrain model
from the points, navigate to the XY Points tab and turn on Expand to Rectangle to draw a bounding rectangle
at the lowest elevation. Then select the Triangulate XY Points button to process the mesh.
To clearly see what the Expand to Rectangle button does, delete the resulting mesh element, and regenerate
the triangles with the switch turned off.
During the generation process, MicroStation will also open it's little text window and display three values
prepended by the following letters:
V - The number of verticies in the resulting element.
F - The number of faces or triangles in the resulting element.
C - The number of connected output mesh elements. For the triangulation process, this value should always
be 1.
Adjust the global lighting:
At this time the mesh is ready to be rendered 'as is' or you can drape an aerial over it which I'll explain in the
following pages. In the meantime, let's just render the triangles to get a better idea of what the terrain looks
like.
Before proceeding, ensure that you have generated the mesh without the bounding rectangle as explained
above. You'll also want to turn off the elevation points since they are no longer needed.
In order to get a better rendering from this particular model, we'll first adjust the global lighting.
Select Tools > Visualization > Rendering > Global Lighting and in the resulting dialog adjust the settings so
they match the graphic below.
.
From the Raster Manager, select File > Attach and select 220_Image.jpg. This image is georeferenced, so be
sure to turn off Place Interactivly from the attach dialog.
To remove the black collar around the image, double-click the image entry in the Raster Manager and
navigate to the Colour tab. Turn on Transparent and set the Transparent Color to 0. Finally, poke on the Apply
button.
Gather necessary information for draping the aerial:
Before going on to the draping process, you will need to grab some information from the image.
Pop back to the attachment settings of the image via the Raster Manager. Navigate to the Location tab and
note the Dimensions, Pixel Size, and Origin of the image. It's a good idea to write these values down on a
scrap of paper since you'll be needing them in a bit.
Dimensions - These values are the distances along the X and Y axis expressed in master units. The sample
image measures 5286 meters in the width, and 5228 meters in the height.
Pixel Size - This is the measured distance in master units of one pixel in the image. Our image has a pixel
size of 1 meter.
Origin - This is the XY location of the lower left corner of the image. So, the lower left corner of the image is
positioned at XY=378864.5, 5993712.5
When images are applied using Elevation Drape as the mapping method, they are tiled so that all four
corners are coincidental. This means that each corner of the image is adjacent to the other three corners as
shown below. (With thanks to Ron Jones from the The WSDOT Design Visualization Group for this bit of
information and for the graphic below.)
Draping introduction:
Ok...so now we are ready to get to the draping process. The ideal and preferred software to use for draping is
Bentley Descartes which drapes images in a snap and requires no effort from the user. However, for those of
you who don't have Bentley Descartes you can still drape images by following along with the remainder of
this article.
I'd like to point out that the draping workflow was originally published in an 1998 MicroStation Manager
Magazine article called Draping photos over MicroStation models authored by Bill Hanson. Bill does a
wonderful job of describing the theory behind each step and I recommend that you read his article to
supplement the following abridged version.
When you first access this dialog, MicroStation will populate the left side with an entry that is the same as
your file name. This entry is the beginnings of a material table which is a file with a .mat extension. A
material table stores material assignments to elements in the design file that live on specified levels and
have specific colour.
In doing so, MicroStation creates a palette file which has the extension of .pal.
A palette is a simple text-based file that contains a materials characteristics. To see what I mean, you can go
ahead and open a delivered palette file from .../bentley/Workspace/system/materials/. You'll also notice that
these files make reference to the "patterns" which are the actual JPG images. These images are in the
.../Workspace/system/materials/pattern/ folder. Finally, palette files also refer to "bump maps" which adds
roughness or texture to the pattern. They are typically greyscale contrasting or companion images that have
the letter "b" as the last character. These will be found in the .../Workspace/system/materials/bump/ folder.
Once the image has been loaded, you will be presented with the following dialog which allows you to
customize the settings or characteristics for the material.
Adjust the materials characteristics:
This step will require you to add the information we gathered about the image. Hopefully you still have those
numbers near by!
Hint: When you have unsaved work, the entries on the left side of the Material Editor will be blue. When there
have been no changes, and there is no need to save, the entries will be black. See the graphic below.
Dismiss the Material Editor dialog and select Apply Material from the Rendering Tools tool box.
Double check that you have the correct palette and material selected as shown in the graphic below.
Poke on Assign by Level/Colour and select the mesh element representing the terrain.
As you can see, there's a fair bit of work involved in draping an image over a DTM using plain old ordinary
MicroStation. If you're going to be doing a fair bit of this, I recommend that you take a second look at
MicroStation Descartes which eliminates 95% of the work.
Other than that, I hope you've found this a worthwhile tutorial and that you'll be able to produce some fine
looking DTM's in no time at all.
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AskInga
3D MicroStation
An Introduction to the 3D Primitives
Change the elevation of raster attachments
Easy orientation in 3D-Space
Extrude shapes based on text
Go Ahead Draw This
Having trouble setting the active depth
Label only the Z with label coordinates tool
Macro to place random cells on DTM
Make a DTM and drape an image MicroStation pre-V8i
Make a DTM and drape an image MicroStation V8i (excluding SSx)
MicroStation 3D - One package, multiple capabilities
Move 2D elements to correct elevation
Move all elements to the same elevation (or common Z-value)
Move element to a given Z
Move or place elements at the correct Z-elevation
STL export settings
Swivel the view camera
The boresite lock
To show the display depth and active depth
Use the old window area tool to propagate the display depth
AccuDraw Secrets
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