TerraShape update

[Guest Colins2]

Hi All,Just a quick update of what I am doing with TerraShape.TerraShape now does some DEM manipulation.It will read from Dted0, Gtopo30 and Globe files and extract the dem data for your current tile. In the case of Dted0, it will merge and form a DEM to the nearest whole degree all round your tile.TerraShape will produce the RAT file for TS2 and the RAS file for the Fly! slicer.It will create a Microdem 6 compatible file from the dem data and will also read the Microdem file format to translate back to RAS, RAT etc. if you have 'massaged' the data with Microdem.In addition, TerraShape will create a dxf contour file from any ras data that it has written. This can now be merged in the same way as any other dxf file that TerraShape has made. Now you can have the contours to help when editing shapefiles :-)TerraShape does not do any extrapolation/interpolation of dem data itself. Microdem is free and an excellent program. It will do just about everything you could want with dem data (except supply missing data).Here are a couple of screen shots:Tile 003-181 (for Hagar)Tile 107-102 (for Roger)Hope this will be useful.I will try to upload the latest version with some documentation in the next few days.Colin

[RandallR 444]

Very nice!

[Guest Colins2]

Thanks Randall :-)The new build is now on my hangar site - enjoy!ColinMy Hangar Site

[Guest Hagar]

Wow!Colin, when the autumn comes, I will dive into Terrashape again, and finish up the ENBR Terrascenery, no matter how much work it is. Obviously, with the new build of yours, it is going to be a LOT easier than before. Still, this project is going to take some time, espically if I have to fix jagged edges manually, or if I decide to make one elevations pod for Southern Norway. We`ll see...

[Guest Colins2]

Thanks Andrew :-)There may be some other features by then.I'm off to Denmark tomorrow, depends upon how busy we are!Colin

[Guest]

Hi Colin,I have just tried this new version, and particularly the contour lines: this worked very well, and this is exactly what I need for correcting and creating rivers! With this new version of Terrashape, tried with the latest version of the Rhone river, I can see immediatly with TurboCAD the places where the river "climbs" the mountains. Thus, correcting it will be easy.Congratulations for your great job ;o)Jeck

[Guest Colins2]

Jeck,That's great news :-)Just need a few more users now.......Colin

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Colin,I'm absolutely drooling at the possibilities. I'm not sure I fully understand what you are saying.Will I be able to change the digital elevation map for 107-102? Anyway I'm off to download.Current 107102.dxf is 125,610 vertices; and still growing :-)Thanks again for this program. Cheers, Roger @YSSY

[Guest Chris Wallace]

Good show, Colin. I'm continually amazed at the dedication within this community, and remain assured that there is still a strong future for this sim ;-)Chris WallaceOttawa, Canada

[Guest Colins2]

Thanks Chris :-)I've still got some more ideas to implement, mostly to do with dems and meshes.Then I really must try and get some sort of manual written.The trouble is that writing the program is quite time consuming and a lot more interesting than writing a manual and in the course of writing about the program more ideas crop up........ :-)Colin

[Guest Colins2]

G'day Roger,Not at the moment!The contours were primarily to assist in drawing land features.I actually had the request from Jeck for his projects with the French rivers. He is just using the default scenery and creating new coastline files so that the rivers and lakes show up inland in default scenery areas.No doubt they can be put to other uses as well.They cannot be imported into anything at all apart from merging into another TerraShape dxf file.When exporting the shapefiles from the dxf, TerraSgape will ignore the contour entries.Editing dems is entirely another matter.The contour lines are not polylines. They are single line segments joining places of equal (interpolated) elevation.Even if I made the line segments into longer polyline segments extracting the contours back to a dem file is a very complicated procedure and probably wouldn't lead to any significant improvement.Another way will have to be found if users want to edit the raw dems.I'm already thinking of how to implement such a function, bit I don't know when it will be.The next step is to try and extract the dem info from Fly! itself. First results are not promising, unfortunately :-(CheersColin

[Guest Chris Wallace]

>The trouble is that writing the program is quite time>consuming and a lot more interesting than writing a manual and>in the course of writing about the program more ideas crop>up........ :-)You don't say?!? I can't say I've ever noticed that myself :-lolChris WallaceOttawa, Canada