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Tutorial:
Roads

A road is formed by creating an open poly and setting its purpose to Road. The poly must be part of a DTM set in order to modify a DTM, and the Proposed DTM must be created. This is not possibly in SimuTerra Standard, only in SimuTerra Pro and in the demo.

Start

• Start SimuTerra, or choose File > New so as to have an empty, untitled, 2D window.

Create data

• Select the Point Tool (a red tool in the shape of a plus sign).

• Click in four spots in the window, once near each of the four corners, forming an approximate, imaginary square which occupies most of the window.

• Click within the square, about an inch (Macintosh) or half an inch (Windows) below and to the right of the top left point.

• Select the Poly Tool (a red tool in the shape of a zig-zag line).

• Click within the square, near the bottom left corner.

This will establish the first vertex of the poly.

• Double-click within the square, near the top right corner.

This will establish the second vertex of the poly, and terminate the creation of the poly. If when you move the mouse you see a line tracking the mouse, you did not succeed in terminating the creation. You could click on any tool in the Tool Palette and force the poly creation to be terminated.

• Select the Selection Tool (the topmost tool, depicted as an arrow).

This is to avoid adding more polys inadvertently later on.

Edit the poly

• Select the poly which you just created, if it is not already selected.

• Choose Window > Info Panel.

Bring the Info Panel to the front if it is not already there.

• Near the top of the Info Panel, in the pop-up menu (drop-down list) named Purpose, choose Road.

• Close the Info Panel.

Create the DTM

• Choose Edit > Select All.

All contents of the document will be selected.

• Choose DTM > Create DTM.

Note that the DTM is still horizontal, since all data still has its default elevation of 0.0.

Create 3D view

• Choose Window > New Window.

A new window will be created, will look identical to the window which you had just been working in.

• While the new window is frontmost, choose View > Display in 3D.

The contents will be displayed in 3D. Since the terrain is still all horizontal, this won’t be very impressive looking.

• Drag the new window to the right.

This is so that you can see the contents of both windows simultaneously.

Raise the data

• Click the first window.

The original window (with the 2D view) will come to the front.

• Click in white space.

This is so as to deselect all objects.

• Select the Raise Tool (the green tool which is depicted as a vertical double-headed arrow).

• Drag the middle point (the apex of the pyramic) up and down.

You can see contour lines appearing and changing in the 2D view, and the pyramid inflating and deflating in the 3D view. But the road prevents the pyramid from looking like in the tutorial "DTM from Scratch."

• Release the mouse while the apex is slightly higher than the corner points, so that you can see some slope in the terrain.

Raise the road

• Using the same Raise Tool, drag the poly up and down.

You should see the road rise and fall.

• Release the mouse button when the road is recognizable as a road.

This road will be used in the next tutorial, on entels.

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