Low-Budget Three-Dimensional CAD Visualization of the Athens National Garden by Merging Heterogeneous Data

摘要

The hand-crafted technique of maquette is a timeless tool in architectural design. In the last decade, the digital maquette is superseding the physical due to easier handling and less cost. This paper describes the procedure to make the 3D digital maquette of Athens National Garden from various heterogeneous data. Due to low budget, existing commercial and academic software was used, glued together with custom free software. The 3D terrain model was produced using simplified contour lines. The 3D model of each species of trees was created manually from description and average dimensions. The trees were put onto the 3D terrain automatically, computing the z dimension by DTM. Information about the tree-covered area was extracted combining CAD with custom methods. Finally, the maquette, was used to display multiple views of the garden from different angles and locations.