Building 3D cadastral system based on 2D survey plans with SketchUp

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) land development and utilization has become the trend for urban planning in the current metropolis. This paper presents a method for building a 3D cadastral management system from survey plans with SketchUp. It concentrates on the geometric representation and topological consistent maintenance of 3D cadastral objects. In this system a complete topological model is built to express the body construction and spatial relationships among 3D property units. SketchUp is used to automatically construct 3D models with attributes and thematic information from 2D survey plans. Spatial topologic relationships and operations are analyzed with the programming and development of Ruby language. The resulting system can manage 3D cadastral objects and manipulate them with spatial operations to support spatial analysis.