How to create 3D boxes within a KML file without ground contact?

Question

I'm actually trying to visualize the output of an atmospheric model within Google Earth using a KML file. The model is divided into several 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 km boxes and each box should get a color like green, red, yellow and so on... This already works fine within Matlab like this plot shows:

But now, my question is, how could I visualize this within Google Earth by a KML file? For the polygons I only found the altitude modes of "relative" and "absolut", but I didn't find a solution to create boxes with a height of e.g. 500 m without contact to the ground. So the box should start at e.g. 250 m above ground...

Has anybody an idea how I could realize this? :)

Answer 1

Akio,

Unfortunately what you are trying to do is very difficult. I have struggled with this a lot myself, and from what I have found in my search for a similar answer often times led to people suggesting using models with SketchUp or some other modeling software. I did however find one useful page that helped me wrap my mind around some ways around this issue. It is complicated but not impossible.

Here is the link: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gec-models-annotations/wk162Ppq5_U/tNwPP_kXTHIJ

I hope that this works for you.