I want this place to build a real road, by which I mean, it's elevated, so the desert flows uninterrupted beneath it, and then it's fun and interesting to drive on (and slow), so, with turnouts, meanders, rises and dips and the like, and attached elevated gardens, and it incorporates a vibrant pedestrian component, and connects to habitat towers along its length.
Arcology, to me, is a kind of apartment tower, or building, but the apartment are distributed in space, with little lanes and alleys between them, and situated on plazas and other kinds of open spaces, and each "floor" includes shopping and dining and promenading and that kind of thing, and the apartments are little outdoor worlds people live in, and you don't necessarily "go down to the street", rather, you live in your neighborhood in the sky, and explore nearby neighborhoods, also in the sky, if you feel like moving around, and streams flow down through the building, and forests, and fields.
It's like you take a standard apartment tower and expand it, like popping corn, so that now it's filled with space, and air, and air, and weather, and light flow and filter through it everywhere.
Buildings need to be planned, or modeled in virtual reality. That's how they get built. And if you want complexity in a building, you need to plan it into it, before it's built, and that's done in virtual reality. The more complexity you want, the more planning, or modeling, you need to do, and then there's "many hands make light work," but existing tools for modeling and planning, including the old ones and the new ones, are very hard to master, so "many hands" is an impossibility. That the old tools are hard to master goes without saying, but that the new ones are hard to master seems like the result of an oversight, not an inescapable reality. What would make the new tools easy to master? If I could describe a building element, using words - words that computers can understand - and then move it about using words. Xml is the relevant language, but that not as obvious as it sounds.
This possibility exists: anyone who wants one has their own virtual planet, in which they can model cities, or whatever they like. It is described something like this: planet, radius. In order to place things on its surface (for example), in defined locations, you need to name a few points. So, planetary axis, north pole, south pole, and Greenwich. Now you can describe an object, such as first beam, first point of first beam, first surface of first beam, first edge of first surface ... this is all jumbled. The point of xml is container theory. First Beam is a container. In it are some named points, named line segments, named plane segments. A plane segment is a container. In it are point references. Planet is a container. In it are some points that establish its internal coordinate system, and, now, First Beam. This isn't a final version. I mean, people are going to accuse me of writing something stupid, but that's because they're biased against me. Basically I'm saying existing CAD is set up wrong. You're supposed to push things around on the screen. Underneath that, the program maintains a model in words, just what I'm describing, but you aren't supposed to need to think about that. Result: you're totally handicapped. Everything becomes incredibly difficult to understand. You need to work with that description of the model in words. Why is existing software set up in this obtuse way, that blocks your access to what you need? I think it's just habit of thought, on the part of the developers. Architecture is an elite craft, and the software is written for an elite class that's accustomed ... Or it might be set up that way purposely to keep out the hoi polloi. (There is information about SketchUp file structure, but I wasn't able to make sense of it.)
Just did look at some of that. http://sketchupplugins.com/about/creating-a-sketchup-plugin/. Still basically have no clue. None.
Sure, you're supposed to go to school for this kind of thing. What if, like me, you aren't going to do that? You're just stuck? I mean, there's a ton of stuff to read for free on the web - I do that - but it's not getting me anywhere. I am not giving up. You can call me stupid all you want. Why should I care?!
Trying again. A model of this earth could consist of a collection of contour lines. Contour lines are loops. https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/structge/SL51ContTopo.HTM. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/topo/. http://search.lycos.com/web/?q=topographic+data&keyvol=009d10876f7387d91646. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/gis/topographic_data.html. https://apps.admin.ibmcloud.com/manage/trial/watsonanalytics.html?cm_mmc=ppc_google--C24803TW
