Tutorial: Obtaining an Aerial Image and Draping It on a Surface

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Concept

Procedure

This tutorial demonstrates how to drape an image on an AutoCAD Civil 3D surface object.

You can drape an existing image on a surface. However, this tutorial demonstrates how to obtain a useful image by using the Google Earth™ mapping service import/export features in AutoCAD Civil 3D.

The Drape Image command combines the following operations into a few simple steps:

A new render material is created from the source image, with mapping based on the scale, position, and rotation of the source image.
The new render material is applied to the selected surface object. Like other render materials, the effect of the draped image is visible only when viewing the image in 3D.

NoteAutoCAD Civil 3D makes it easy to retrieve low-resolution, public image and terrain data from Google Earth. While the data you can retrieve from Google Earth may not be suitable for detailed design, it can be useful for project planning and presentation.

For more information, see the AutoCAD Civil 3D Help topics Draping Images On Surfaces and Google Earth Import and Export.

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