[joris.b]

Hello all,

I saw the interesting plugin Skatter for Sketchup (http://getskatter.com/). Does something similar like this (or Forest Pack) exist for Rhino? There is Land Design, but is looks much more limited and only seems to use it's native plants collection and not i.e. .mxs files. Anybody has experience with these plugins? How do you make landscaping in Rhino?

Thanks.

Joris

[Mihai]

This looks like something that Grasshopper can handle? A quick search brings up this

http://www.food4rhino.com/app/scatter

Looks like what you need, and can scatter blocks and proxies too apparently, which I think means it can scatter MXS references.

[joris.b]

Thanks, I'm using the Grasshopper Scatter app and it works pretty smooth with .mxs files.

The Skatter for Sketchup has more functionality, but since the other one is a Grasshopper file it's also possible to modify it according to different situations/needs. I will test some things when I have a bit more time, I don't use grasshopper every day so it always takes a while to figure out the best way to solve something.

By the way: is it possible to build the landscape in Sketchup (.mxs files) and afterwards load it into Rhino? Using it as a .mxs file will not do because it's not possible to have a .mxs inside another .mxs...

[JDHill]

It may be possible; component instances from SU come into Rhino as instances, therefore:

1. Import a .skp file into Rhino.
2. Use BlockEdit on one of its instances, adding an .mxs reference to the block definition.
3. Delete any geometry from the block definition (unless you want to keep it).
4. Exit BlockEdit and then explode all instances of this block definition.

This will yield an .mxs reference in Rhino, wherever there was previously an instance from SU. However, this depends on the SU skatter plugin generating instances in the .skp that you import into Rhino, and I don't know if that's possible.