Working

with 3d buildings and models in Arc Scene

This workshop will cover the basics of creating and working with 3D data in Arc Scene. We will take a basic flat building
foot print layer and create new 3D building models from them. These models can them be the input to 3D analysis
operations such as shadow analysis, or as the basis for creating more detailed 3D models in software like SketchUp.

Setting up the DEM

In the ArcScene Catalog side tab, open a new connection to the 3D_GIS_Workshop folder.
Open the SF_3D_Data geodatabase and drag the SF_NED_10m elevation model into ArcScene.

This is an elevation model of a portion of San Francisco city, but youll

notice that it actually looks flat in ArcScene. Our first step is to set this up
as a 3d surface.

Right click on the layer name and select Properties

Go to the Base Heights tab and set Elevation from surfaces to
Floating on a custom surface.
In the drop down bar select the SF_NED_10m later and hit OK.

If the terrain you are modelling is relatively flat you can increase the Z
scaling by adding a custom elevation factor.

Under Properties in the Base Heights tab, change the Elevations

from features value to 2.

Now return the value back to 1.


Extrude basic footprints:
Next well add your building footprints and drape the over the
terrain.

From the SF_3d_data.gdb drag the SF_footprints feature

class into the map and above the NED layer in the table
of contents.

Notice that you can see some of the building polygons but only
those around the edges of the NED. Because they are
represented as flat, the rest are hidden beneath the terrain.
The next step will lift the footprints and drape them over the
terrain layer.

Right click on the SF_footprints layer and open the layer

Properties > Base Heights tab.
Set the Elevation from surfaces to Floating on a custom
surface and choose the SF_NED_10m layer and hit OK.

We now have 2d buildings on a 3d surface. But we want to see

this look like a real city, with 3 dimensional buildings. Well start
by extruding the 2d footprints to look like 3d objects.

Right click on the SF_footprints layer and open the layer

Properties > Extrusion tab.
Check the box for Extrude features in layer.

From here we have a couple of different options for how we

extrude the buildings. We can set a uniform extrusion height by
value, or we can apply an expression that reads a unique building
height value from the footprints table of attributes or as groups
of building height classes.
Lets start by setting a uniform height to all the buildings. The
value entered here is always in whatever units the data
projection are in (meters in this case).

In the Properties > Extrusion tab, enter 30 for the

Extrusion value, hit OK.

This extrudes all buildings to the same uniform height above

the elevation surface. If the building footprint is draped at
an angle over the surface, notice that the roof line is as well.
We can adjust this by changing the Apply extrusion by
setting so that roof lines are extruded to a set value above
the max or min elevation value of the base footprint. This
levels the roofline and creates a more realistic building
model.

In the Extrusion tab of the layer Properties, set the

Apply extrusion by drop down to adding it to each
features min height.

If youre very lucky, or put in a lot work on the attribute

table, you may have a building footprint dataset that
includes real building heights in it. In this case we can
actually model the city so each building is represented with
its true building height.

In the Extrusion tab, select the calculator icon next

to the Extrusion value window.
From the Fields list choose diff_heigh, hit OK.
Hit OK again in the Properties window.

The result should be a new representation of the buildings

set to their real heights above ground.

Convert footprints to 3d feature class:

So far weve created what look like 3d buildings in the GIS. But as
far as the software is concerned these are really still just 2d
features with a cool 3d trick applied to them. If we want to do
anything like analyze shadows, or import more realistic models, we
need to convert these to a 3d feature layer called a multi-patch.

Go to the Geoprocessing menu and open the

Geoprocessing Options window.
Make sure Background Processing is UNCHECKED.
Next, open the ArcToolbox and 3D Analyst Tools.
Go to Conversion and double click Layer 3D to Feature
Class.
Set the input feature class to SF_footprints
Choose your project geodatabase and save the output file
as SF_buildings_3d.

Although the new layer looks just like the extruded footprints layer,
ArcScene treats them differently. With the new layer we can now
perform 3d analysis or swamp and modify our building models.

Import a Sketchup Model:

Do a web search for SketchUp 3d

Warehouse and click on the top result:
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/
Search for Transamerica in the upper
right.
A number of models for the Transamerica
Pyramid in SF will turn up. Select the first
record by Sebastian S.
Click the download icon and save the file
(Transamerica.skp) to your project folder.

In order for ArcScene to correctly replace the model

we need to convert the downloaded SketchUp file to the more universal COLLADA file format.
4

Open the new 3d model in SketchUp, then Export as a new

Collada file: File > Export > 3D Model > COLLADA File.
Back in ArcScene, add the 3D Editor tool bar (Customize >
Toolbars > 3D Editor).
In the 3D Editor tool bar select Start Editing then use the
Select Features tool to select the footprint that
corresponds woth the model we downloaded (tall grey box
in downtown SF).
In the 3D Editor dropdown select Replace With Model
and choose the new COLLADA file you created
(Transamerica.dae).