BIM on the Rocks

Using Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler to Gain Public Support

What would you rather take to a public hearing?

A really spectacular set of plan profile sheets…

Or a 3D model that you can navigate in real time, and let everyone take home on their iPad for more exploring?

Which helps a citizen understand what the new road will look like from his or her backyard? Or what a new traffic pattern might mean for access to their business?

Here is a video on youtube about Gaining Public Support using Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler:

Challenge:  The general public does not typically understand technical information that is conveyed in 2D paper plans.  Negative feedback from public stakeholders, including company owners, who do not have a clear picture of how a finished project will appear from their backyard or impact their business can stall projects. Attending public participation meetings is not always an option, so anytime, anywhere access to project information is a common requirement.

Solution: Communicate alternatives and project impacts in a format that is more easily understood by non-technical audiences, Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler enables public stakeholders to explore high quality, visual models containing project pertinent information. Conveying a clear picture of impacts to adjacent property owners and businesses helps to alleviate concerns, answer questions and speed stakeholder buy-in.

Game Changers: A Look Back at Two Years Since Project Galileo

My best blogging moments come when I stumble upon something interesting during my daily work. This time of year, my daily work consists of software and projects that I can’t talk about yet. But here is something I can talk about.

photo by Whitney Carmean, ImagineArt.

Two years ago, we were introduced to Project Galileo on Autodesk Labs. Back then, I didn’t quite know how to describe it, but I had a feeling that it would change things. (Project Galileo graduated a few months later and became Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler .) Here we were, designing our roads and neighborhoods and sewer systems. Minding our own business. New software comes along and we think, “Wow. That’s cute. But it isn’t going to change my processes.”

I was expecting my third child during the early days of Project Galileo, and being the nerd that I am, I decided he would be my own “Project Galileo”. Then he graduated and became Baby Galileo.

And we thought, “Wow. He’s cute! But he isn’t going to change our processes.” We had this figured out already. The first baby is an education. The second is a butt kicking. The third? They just slide right in. You’re beyond adaptation at this point. Your systems are solid and foolproof. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But your system stops working. It’s not that it’s broken. It just needs to evolve in a way that you could never have previously imagined.

What you forget is that the world has changed just a bit in the years since you had your first, and that you’ve changed. With a seven year age difference, Panorama and Galileo are growing up with completely different experiences. Panorama had all of the focus and attention of adults, but no big sister to show her the ropes. We, as parents, have better skills and know we need to be more flexible as well.

We had digital cameras and email for sharing pictures of Panorama. We had a blog and a Flickr account for sharing pictures of Prospector. Galileo will grow up with every minute of his life chronicled by iPhone on Facebook with poses inspired by Pintrest. Times are changing fast, expectations are changing faster. Granny not only expects to get a Christmas card picture, but real time stills, videos, webcam calls, Facebook comment feeds, Spotify playlists, and blog posts with witty anecdotes.

Nine years ago, Civil 3D was born and forced us to examine how we did civil engineering. We adapted and found ourselves closer to the dream. Every day, I learn more about how Infrastructure Modeler will open even more doors. We thought we had it figured out, but there is a lot more fun to be had.

Happy 2nd Birthday, sweet Galileo.

Photo by Beth Malonoski, BCM Art and Photography.

Have you read about Project Mercury yet?

Using Analysis Results from Map 3D in Infrastructure Modeler

I have some sewer lines from GIS information in Map 3D. I brought it in through an FDO connection.

I ran a feature buffer on the data. Map 3D creates the buffer as an SDF file and automatically connects to it. You maybe not have realized that was happening if you’ve ever done a feature buffer before. In this case, I just want a 20 foot buffer around each pipe to mark a utility zone.

Next, I go over to Infrastructure Modeler, import the SDF and configure it as a coverage. (If you need help with this process, see my post from the other day, Importing Parcels with Black Outlines in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler.)

Now I can see my buffer in Infrastructure Modeler, and use it as a guide when working out concepts, etc.

This really gets me thinking about what other types of analysis I can do in Map 3D and bring in to Infrastructure Modeler to visualize the analysis in context. Remember that trick I did the other day where I assigned different heights to parcels based on their value? What if I did that with an overlay analysis of flood zones and land use? Or a buffer around dangerous intersections? How can you leverage these tools from the Infrastructure Design Suite in combination to tell your story? I was especially thinking about doing a stream buffer analysis with Map 3D and seeing what that would look like in Infrastructure Modeler.

Here are some other posts your might be interested in:

Making Tooltips in Infrastructure Modeler

Creating a Land Use Theme in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler 

Tell a Better Visual Story Using Heights and Themes for Land Value

Infrastructure Modeler is part of the Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite. Learn more and download a free 30 day trial here: www.autodesk.com/infrastructuredesignsuite

Tell a Better Visual Story Using Heights and Themes for Land Value

How would your client react if you showed them something like this instead of a 2D map or excel table?

Let’s say I’m working on an exhibit for a road realignment proposal. I need my client to understand how much it will cost to acquire parcels for right of way. I have a shapefile of the parcels from the county. They might have an assessed value already assigned in your county, but for mine, I used Map 3D tools to add a new object data field of “Land_Value”. For my example, I just did values in the thousands (i.e. $250,000 = 250). Then, I exported the polygons as SDF and imported them into Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler.

When I configure the data, I’m going to tell Infrastructure Modeler to make these polyons into buildings. Yes, buildings!

I’ll grab that Land_Value data for the description field, as well as for the Roof Height. This will make my “buildings” the same height as the Land_Value. More expensive parcels will be taller than less expensive parcels.

It probably doesn’t make sense to have my “building” be 250m tall, so I can play around with that height either by changing the units or…

I can make a formula. I just want something that conveys the message and shows the relationship between land values. I’m not going to be measuring the heights or anything, so I’ll use Land_Value / 4.

I want the building bottoms to be draped on my terrain.

I didn’t assign a style yet, because I want to use that same theming technique that we learned the other day to assign colors based on that Land_Value field.

I also want to assign a tooltip to each building, like we did the other day for land use types. This will let me hover over one of my building/parcels and see the actual land value. We learned tooltips the other day in this post.

One the data refreshes, I see my parcels as 3D “buildings” with variable heights.

Hovering over a building, I get my tooltip.

Just like the other day, I can make a theme for these parcels. The red ones would be the most expensive.

What else can you use this technique for? How about:

Traffic counts

Air pollution

Lighting or sound impacts

Highly sensitive habitats or wetlands

Anything that you want to “pop” and have your stakehold say “OOOOh, now I see which parts we need to avoid!”

Using Bookmarks to Save Your View in Infrastructure Modeler

I’m a huge fan of Named Views in Civil 3D (or AutoCAD or Map 3D). They are very handy while you are doing design because you can quickly get to where you need to work, or what you need to fit on a sheet.

In Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler, you can use Bookmarks to save important views. Let’s say I wanted to navigate easily to a location in my model where I have a historical site.

Zoom, pan, adjust your view to look like you want to remember. Then press Add Bookmark.

Give your Bookmark a name.

 

You’ll see your Bookmark on the list under Bookmarks. Easy!

Now when you sit down with your clients, you can quickly zoom into the key areas you want to talk about. This is also useful for getting ready to use the Storytelling tools.

Creating a Land Use Theme in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler

My state has a nice land use shapefile. It contains polygons that are labeled things like “airport”, “forest”, “mixed urban” and “single family residential”. Your state or county might have zoning information. Or you probably have access to things like flood zone polygons, or similar.

I want to make a theme based on these land use types.

After I import the data, I go into the Configure dialog, just like I showed you the other day. In addition to all of the normal configuring stuff about style and draping, I need to tell Infrastructure Modeler which field in my data is important to me. In this case, I know the LANDUSE07 field contains the information that I’d want to “theme”, so I pick that for the NAME field.

Next, choose Analyze > Feature Themes.

For the Property, you want to theme on the Name. That’s the field I assigned to my LANDUSE07 information.

I can pick a color range, or assign individual colors to each unique property. Also note, I can made the theme transparent.

Now, I can see all of my different land uses in color!

Think of all of the valuable things you could theme to show your client their options for a project, or work on region planning, how about watershed studies? Lots of great ideas.

Another Way to Use Tooltips in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler

Earlier, I showed you how to read a field in an imported data file to create a tooltip. There are a few other ways you might use tooltips in your model.

In this case, I’ve located a historic site near my project. It didn’t come from GIS data, maybe I was doing research at the county or my archeologist alerted me to the affected parcels.

I can create a Coverage Area and assign my own custom style.

 

Once the Coverage Area is created, I select it then right-click > Properties.

In the Properties dialog, I can manually type what I would like the tooltip to be. I could also use the %NAME% or any other field in the tooltip, just like I showed you in the last post on tooltips. Be sure to UPDATE the model (or check Auto Update).

Remember that tooltips don’t work in edit mode. Change back to “Explore Model”

Now when I hover over the area, I see the tooltip.

What else can you use this for?

Making Tooltips in Infrastructure Modeler

I have a shapefile of Land Use in my state. I want to make it so that when I hover over one of the polygons that it tells me the land use.

Like this:

In the Data Sources dialog, I right-click on my Land Use entry and choose Configure. In the Data Source Configuration dialog, I need to tell Infrastructure Modeler which field in the dataset matters to me. I’m going to say that the Name of each polygon should be the LANDUSE07 field. I know that is the field that will give me the information I need.

Next, I switch to the Tooltip tab. This is where I say- use that NAME field as the tooltip. Type %Name% in the Tooltip space.

Close and refresh.

I need to make sure I am out of editing mode to see tooltips. Switch to Explore Model first.

Now, I can explore my model and see different land uses.

Curious about how I did the color theme? Check out Monday’s post on theming in Infrastructure Modeler!

Importing Parcels with Black Outlines in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler

Hello there again! Yes, I am knee deep in Infrastructure Modeler this week. Have I mentioned that Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler is part of the Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite? Well, now you know!

Yesterday, I left you with a model that included images, terrain and water. Well, how about some parcels? Or maybe you’ve tried importing parcels and couldn’t figure out the best way to display them.

First, import your file that has the parcel data. My county serves this up as SHP. You could also make your own SHP, SDF, or whatever using Map 3D tools and bring those in.

You’ll import and nothing will happen- because you ALWAYS need to configure when importing into Infrastructure Modeler.

Assign Coverage as type.

Now, in theory, you should assign a style here. But right now, the only choices are like sand and grass and other stuff that makes no sense for parcels. So I’m going to leave it blank for now. We’ll make a style in a second. Or maybe two seconds.

Select Drape so that the parcels are projected onto your terrain.

Wait, nothing happened? Time to panic? No, remember, we didn’t assign a style yet. If you hover over a parcel, you can see that they “light up”. They are just invisible to the naked eye.

So bring up the Style Palette, and then press the green (+) sign to make a new style!

I made mine to have no fill color and a black outline.

Go back into Configure and assign your new style.

Boom!

Tomorrow- how to add tool tips that tell you the parcel number! (or anything else interesting.)

Breathing Some Life Into Infrastructure Planning

I’m working on some of the material for our upcoming CE News webcast on June 18, 2012 called:

Planning and Environmental Assessment with BIM for Infrastructure

I’m starting with a simple aggregation of some road centerlines, some parcel polygons and aerial imagery. There is nothing here that is special or fancy- just regular shapefiles. In the webcast we’ll see how planning activities that might have been previously done on paper or in two dimensions can be more effective in Infrastructure Modeler. I’ll also do some analysis in Map 3D and preliminary design in Civil 3D.

As I work through the material, I am reminded of this demonstration I did for our media launch this year. (If you are short on time, my part starts around minute 10). In this demo, I take a scanned raster image of a paper sketch, use Raster Design to rubbersheet the image and assign it a coordinate system. Then, I bring it into Infrastructure Modeler and use it as a guide for sketching a proposal. I’ve been able to take a piece of paper and “breathe some life into it.”

I also had the opportunity to deliver this demonstration to Matt Ball. You can find his write up here: Infrastructure Modeler: Autodesk’s Visual Model Management Tool.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s getting pretty late here and I want to head to bed soon, but before I do, I’m going to push this model into the cloud so that James and I can work on it more tomorrow. (Learn how to set up your Autodesk 360 Infrastructure Modeler account in this video.)