No project gets through without revisions, changes and surprises along the way. That’s why a non-destructive workflow has become close to essential: one where every element you create carries editable parameters, leaving the landscape architect free to test and compare different proposals without losing valuable time. A wall’s thickness and the path it follows, the spacing between elements, the riser height on a flight of steps, the slope of a ramp: all of these can be set up as parameters you can adjust, and they also give the model the information it will need later for documentation.

Terrain modeling is keeping pace here too. Even so, the ground still tends to be the usual blind spot, since reshaping it often means recalculating volumes and sections separately, outside the rest of the model. Increasingly, though, terrain is being treated as a living, measurable part of the design, with the same level of parametric control as everything else in the project.


Below are some of the features that will help you save time and keep your modeled terrain and its documentation in step. 

Start with Data That’s True to the Site 

Turn your elevation data into terrain that’s easy to edit and ready to reshape. RhinoLands works with whatever you have on hand, whether that’s a DEM, a GIS shapefile or a point cloud from a topographic scan. If you’d rather begin with rough context, such as a satellite view of the site, the Import Earth Data feature lets you bring in a location just by pointing to it on the map, complete with buildings, roads and terrain. Whichever route you take, you always end up with a visible mesh terrain that you can edit vertex by vertex or work with like any other element in the model.

Terrain contour lines generated from satellite imagery.

See the full workflow: Scan Import terrains from the web in Lands Design for Rhino

Calculate Cut and Fill as You Design 

Every terrain operation, whether a berm, a terrace or an excavation, is an editable parameter, so you can change its outline or the route it follows. Adjust it and the cut and fill volume updates instantly, so you can see the effect of each change as you design. The same goes for paths: rather than being fixed lines, they follow the surface and recalculate their own cut and fill whenever you change the alignment or the topography. You can also cap the maximum slope as a percentage, segment by segment if needed, to meet accessibility or code requirements, and the path will adjust its grade so it never goes over that limit.


Each of these operations is stored as a separate element in the project, which means you can switch it off, removing it from both the calculations and the view, without losing it. All its information stays saved and ready to bring back into the model and the calculations whenever you need it. This lets you compare different scenarios on the same site, turning operations on and off to see how the earthwork volume changes in each case, and make data-driven decisions about which proposal is the most efficient.

Comparison of two different path alignments on the same terrain, with their earthwork calculations 

Coordinate with Your BIM Workflow 

For landscape architects working alongside architecture or engineering teams, interoperability isn’t a nice-to-have. Any data lost when moving between programs means redoing work and more room for error. RhinoLands connects directly with Revit through Rhino.Inside.Revit, so you can design the landscape in RhinoLands and see the results in Revit. The transfer runs from RhinoLands to Revit using the “Lands Design objects to Revit” Grasshopper definitions, which you can download from Food4Rhino. Terrain and modeled elements arrive in Revit with their cut and fill data intact, giving architecture, structural and building services teams a shared terrain model and earthwork figures to work from, with no need to rebuild or recalculate anything.  

Topography created in RhinoLands and transferred to Revit.

See the full workflow: A topography solution for Revit users: Lands Design inside Revit

Taken together, these features bring terrain fully into the landscape design workflow, from the first site data through design changes and earthwork calculations to BIM coordination.


To see how RhinoLands’ terrain tools work together on a real project, watch the webinar below:

RhinoLands is the standalone software program that combines Lands Design with Rhinoceros 3D in a single integrated interface designed for landscape architecture workflows. Available with a 60-day free trial at rhinolands.com/download.