A hole is an area with a negative altitude. This lesson digs a pond and reads how much it holds.
Dig it
- On the Terrain tab, draw the pond's outline — an ellipse, or the pencil for a natural edge.
- Click the altitude slider's number and type −0.6. The ground drops six tenths of a metre inside the outline, with the sides grading down to it.
- Orbit in 3D to see the basin.
A steeper side wants a smaller rounding (in the 3D view's cog) or Hard edges ticked on the pond, which makes the edge a vertical drop like a lined tank.
Make it water
With the pond selected, the two chips under the drawing tools set its fill and texture. Choose Water. Textures show in 3D and in the photorealistic render; the flat colour is what the plan shows.
Read the volume
Select the pond. A Volume button appears in the toolbar over the plan's top-right corner; click it. It reads the space between the pond's top and the ground the other shapes form below it, in cubic metres — a pond's capacity, or the soil a pit takes out. Change the depth and click Recalculate.
The same button works on a raised area, where it reads the fill needed to build it up.
A deeper pit
The same steps make a cellar dig or a soakaway: a rectangle, −2, hard edges. For anything that needs to know how much soil leaves the site in total, Calculate cut and fill compares the whole plan to the ground as it stands.
Next
Slope a surface — tilting an area instead of keeping it level.