Maps to BiM in 15 steps

It's extremely difficult to work in BiM with great extension of land within the source modeling file.

Yet is fool to think about a building, an infrastructure or a facility without an urban background, without an environment to contextualize the relation of our design with the remaining.

Here comes a short image guide on how to implement the API developed from élie Michel. Credits and links to his pages at the end of the article.

One of the first advantages is that the tool takes into consideration Earths curvature, so you can then have a geometric reference on projects with more than 1km length

STEP 1) CREATE A GOOGLE CHROME SHORTCUT

STEP 2) RENAME THE SHORTCUT TARGET

COPY AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS IN THE TARGET FIELD:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "SET RENDERDOC_HOOK_EGL=0 && START "" ^"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe^" --disable-gpu-sandbox --gpu-startup-dialog"

RESULT AFTER THE RETARGETING: THE GOOGLE CHROME SHORTCUT CHANGE ICON

STEP 3) DOWNLOAD RenderDocs PORTABLE VERSION v.1.13

https://renderdoc.org/builds#stable

STEP 4) START RenderDocs FROM THE LOCATION WHERE YOU HAVE UNZIPPED IT

Follow the selection in the image below:

qrenderdoc.exe

STEP 5) GO ON FILE TAB AND SELECT:?INJECT INTO PROCESS

STEP 5.1) click on the icon of the CHROME.EXE - shortcuts

STEP 6) TAKE NOTE OF THE GPU NUMBER (PID)?THAT CHROME SENDS OUT IN THE MESSAGE BOX

In this case the message box of Google send out the code:?10016

do NOT shut that window yet!

STEP 7 ) COPY AND PASTE THE PID NUMBER IN THE RenderDocs SEARCH BAR.

LOCATE THE PID IN THE LIST.

CLICK THE CODE!

In this case you can see that we have pasted 10016 in the search bar. Case that it does not appears directly click on the button?REFRESH.

STEP 8) SET THE SECOND OF DELAY YOU WANT TO HAVE ONCE YOU ARE ON GOOGLE MAPS.

CLICK ON?CAPTURE AFTER DELAY.

The second of delays helps you to find the right spot and the right angle to capture Google Maps.

STEP 9) NOW YOU CAN CLOSE THE DIALOG BOX CONTAINING THE?PID?(BOX MENTIONED IN STEP 6)

This will trigger the start of Google Chrome, you will notice a strange set of numbers in the heading. This is the capturing system streaming the content.

STEP 10) ENTER IN THE MODE SATELLITE, CLICKING ON LAYERS ICON AND SELECTING IT.

Once you have clicked on the icon LAYERS, you will select SATELLITE view, plus flagging the seletion GLOBAL VIEW, and deselecting the flag LABELS.

STEP 11) NOW ITS TIME FOR YOU TO FIND A GOOD AERIAL VIEW AND START ORBITING YOU CAMERA AT DIFFERENT INCLINATION IN ORDER TO CAPTURE AS MUCH AS YOU NEED.

Obs: the capturing will happen on everything that the Google Maps engine visualizes. So if you tilt your camera very near to the horizon, catching up extreme distant places, you will end up with a very big rendered model in Blender. Good practise is to have the Google Maps camera near to the vertical.

Testing and failing a couple of times will give you the sense of this warning.

STEP 12) SAVE THE SCREEN-CASTED 3D VIEW IN RenderDocs

STEP 13) OPEN BLENDER. SELECT FROM THE?FILE?TAB,?GOOGLE MAPS CAPTURE,?FROM THE?IMPORT?SELECTION. OPEN THE FILE SAVED IN THE PREVIOUS STEP OF THE GUIDE

STEP 14) SCALE THE MODEL TO THE REAL DIMENSION.

When yuo create the Blender model it is always out of scale. You need to rescale it thanks to Google Maps measuring tool.

You will take one distance between two corner of two distant building in GoogleMaps (in the image the two selected are too near, but it is functional to illustrate the concept.) 121,57m in this case

And then you will measure the same two building distance in Blender. 2.74m in this case.

Some simple math then 121.57m / 2.74m = 44.36 scale. This is the ratio of the two representations, one minute more, almost finished, last crucial step.

Blender assigned to this model A SCALE by default which is 0.008, so to bring the model in real meters you will multiply the 44.36 representation scale by Blender scale.

44.36 x 0.008 = 0.35488

0.35488 is the value that you will substitute to the default Blender scale, in ALL THE AXIS: X,Y,Z values.

STEP 15) EXPORT TO THE MOST COMMON BiM FORMATS: NOW WE ARE DONE!

If you are curious and want to work further, get the Blender add-on here to glue together several 3D pieces into one. I do not gain any money from this app. It's just acknowledging a good product!

Donate to the API creator and learn more on Github:

https://github.com/eliemichel/MapsModelsImporter/releases