A site, graded, cut, watered and drawn, in one session

the top row. coyote_mountain_topo is this tool, flight is its sister for planning a drone survey. the keys line is the cheat sheet: 1 to 4 pick a view, 0 refits it, the wheel zooms and a middle drag pans. simple shows the essentials and deep every tool; tour restarts this walk; dark and light swap the chrome, the paper stays paper.

the status line. it spells out what the tool under the cursor does. the view buttons set the camera: top, front, back, left, right, axon, or perspective, and zoom extents refits whatever is on screen.

the rail starts with the four views. plan is the drawing sheet: contours every 10 ft, a heavier index line every 50, short downhill strokes are hachures. model is the 3d ground, section a cut through it, analysis where the water goes.

the world block. type a place or lat, lng and press fetch terrain; home brings back encino solo. site width sets how much of the world to grab and rotation turns the sheet. everything drawn stays pinned to the ground when either changes.

the draw block. raise, lower, smooth and flatten shape the ground with the radius and strength sliders below; the cut and fill numbers in the grading block update as you drag. here is one stroke.

the planting row. tree, shrub, hedge, gravel or paving turn pen strokes into planting and surfaces that carry through to the model and the exports. one tree, planted for you.

pad flattens a rectangle, oval or drawn shape. balance cut and fill finds the level that moves the least earth, or hold the level of the first corner. the edges slope down, or become retaining walls where a slope would not fit. here is a pad.

path draws a road or trail that follows the ground: width, a bare, gravel or paved surface, and raised or sunk by the slider so it shows in a 3d print. here is a gravel track. the ember and grey wash on the sheet is fill and cut.

section line: drag from a to b on the sheet and the section view cuts the ground there. drag again elsewhere for c to d, up to four lines; tap one to make it the active one. we come back to it after the model.

the sheet block. the contour interval, hachures density, labels on or off, the cut·fill wash or a plain sheet, contours labelled to read uphill or existing ground dashed, and the aerial photo with its opacity. photo on.

press 2 for the model. right drag orbits, the wheel zooms in close enough to read a single contour, and the view buttons on the status line give the standard views; this is axon. in deep, the model block holds smooth or stepped, a draped ground or the cardboard-stack look of the laser cut, and the photo, orbit or sculpt and rain switches.

the render block. render turns the model into a perspective with a real sun: the section cut menu (none, black or white face along the active line), the background menu (four skies or a studio backdrop), the surface colour, and the sun clock with month, hour, play day and play year. the eye height button sits with the view buttons on the status line.

the paint block. plain or paint, then paint it sends the render to an image model that paints real ground, plants and light over it: as a photograph, a watercolour, an ink wash, a map mash-up that keeps the map colours and contour lines and paints life on top, or a white card model with only the planting and water painted in. what it sends carries the contour lines, the standing rain and the surface colour you chose, so the painter holds the real ground. the words box tells it what it cannot see, and up to three reference photos go along too: the place, the look you want, or the building to be built, so a placed object is painted as that building. it needs your own key, google or openai, chosen in the painter menu and kept in this browser only.

the section, press 3. paint this section sends the active cut to the painter square-on, exactly as the drawing sheet paints it, and without a key it is drawn instead. proposed ground is solid, existing dashed, cut grey, fill ember, water blue, and the vertical exaggeration slider in the site block stretches it. with several lines drawn the sections stack down the page; tap one, or its tab, to make it the active one that the render cut and the geology follow. in deep, the geology switch draws the mapped bedrock under the ground from the finest published map of the place.

analysis, press 4. the water block: flow lines, catchments, ridges, keypoints, a keyline with its plow lines, swales, a dam with its pond, a wetness index and the landforms read from the ground, each a switch; plowing effect appears beside keyline and bends the rain along the furrows. tap picks where the keyline or the dam goes. rain is running; the sliders below set the storm, the flow threshold, runoff, plow and swale spacing and the dam height. the sun block below holds the sun study and its clock. for exploring a site, not engineering.

the grading block: cut and fill volumes for the whole design, with topsoil strip depth and the swell of loosened earth folded in. this is the number to watch while grading.

the project block. undo, delete all and save; new, open and copy link for this exact place.

the exports. a png of the sheet, an stl to print, a laser file for the stack or the same as a dxf, cnc lines for the mill, the drawing as kml and the graded ground as a geotiff at their real coordinates, and the drawing sheet: the model and the section painted, plan, analysis and notes drawn, on one page. that is the tour; your own project comes back now.