By Coulter Heiberger · Updated
Real terrain in SketchUp from real contours: more control than an Add Location snapshot, and yours to keep.
SketchUp can fetch terrain itself: Add Location drops a snapshot of terrain and imagery into the model, so start there if a rough patch is enough. When you need control over the resolution, the extent, and the files, work from real data instead: order a Mantle Place bundle for the area you draw, import its DXF contour lines, included at no extra cost, rebuild the surface natively with Sandbox From Contours, and drape the bundle’s aerial imagery over it as a texture. The result is terrain that is genuinely yours: re-downloadable forever, matched to its imagery, and consistent with what the rest of the team is using in Revit or Rhino, rather than a one-off snapshot living inside a single SketchUp file.
Three ways. Add Location (File, Add Location) drops in an elevated terrain patch with imagery and needs SketchUp Go or higher. File, Import, DEM reads USGS .dem files in the desktop app. Or import contour lines as DXF in SketchUp Pro and build the surface with Sandbox From Contours, the route this guide follows.
Not as terrain. The DEM importer reads USGS .dem and SDTS .ddf files and treats a .tif only as an image. Use the bundle’s DXF contours with Sandbox From Contours instead, or convert the GeoTIFF to a .dem file in a GIS first.
Yes. The site is not locked to SketchUp: the same contours, imagery, and meshes open in Revit, Rhino, Twinmotion, and more, so a massing study in SketchUp and the team’s later models sit on identical ground.
Use Add Location for a quick, rough context patch; use a bundle when the terrain needs to be accurate, re-usable, and shared across tools.
Draw the area on Mantle Place and order the bundle. In your vault, download Everything: the DXF contours, the imagery drape PNG, and Drawings/Linework.dxf with the streets and buildings, all clipped to your extent.
Import the DXF contour lines into SketchUp Pro (CAD import is a Pro feature), checking that the import units are set to meters so the site lands at real scale.
Select the contour curves and run Sandbox From Contours to generate the TIN terrain surface from them.
Apply the imagery drape PNG to the terrain as a projected texture so the ground reads as the real site under your model.
For a quick massing study, often yes. It is a snapshot, though: fixed resolution, provider terms, and data that lives only in that model. A bundle gives you the files, the source resolution, and reuse across tools.
The dependable native route is the DXF contours plus Sandbox, since mesh formats like OBJ typically need an importer extension. Rebuilding from contours keeps the terrain fully native and editable.
Yes. Every format in the bundle is cut from the same georeferenced data, so the surface you build from the contours matches the meshes your teammates import into Rhino, Blender, or Unreal.
Draw your area, read its Site Brief, and download a bundle you keep: terrain, imagery, CAD drawings, and more, ready for Unreal, Revit, Rhino, and more. $5 plus $2 per square kilometer, and 2 km² and under is free.
Native plugins: Mantle Place for Unreal and Mantle Place for Revit.
Enter the curator