BIM on the Rocks

Cumulative Hatch Area and Stormwater Management Plans

I’m working on that Master Planned Community again. This time, my colleague Brian and I are designing some green Best Management Practices for a townhouse/condo courtyard.

This is just a quick tip that is useful in a variety of circumstances. Whenever you need a cumulative area of something, create hatches. Then, pick each of the hatches. The property window will give you the cumulative area.

There are quite a few ways to tackle the study of “areas”. I like parcels and catchment objects for many things, but sometimes you just want a quick benchmark. If your hatch is associated with its boundary, this area will be dynamic if you adjust the boundary.

What are some of your best workflows for figuring out different cover types for stormwater management analysis?

Trying Different Streetscapes in a Master Planned Community (and some #AU2011 classes)

Our Master Planned Community continues to evolve. One thing that Arnab and I have been working on (well, let’s be honest, Arnab does the work and I mostly just talk) is an neighborhood of medium density residential.

Something that has been very valuable in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler has been the ability to try different road cross sections and see how they “feel”. What does our streetscape look like? What is the scale of a two land road versus a four lane road? Does it seem like a human would be comfortable crossing the street? What happens to the intersection?

While we aren’t at the point of doing a true traffic analysis just yet (we are doing one, though, and I will share the information once we are finished), this exercise made me think of the Road Diet video from Streetfilms. From the accompanying blog post “What’s a road diet? Quite simply, traffic-calming expert Dan Burden told Streetfilms, “A road diet is anytime you take any lane out of a road.”

Moving Beyond the Automobile: Road Diets from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

I can drag and drop different road styles from the built-in catalog and see what happens when I make my four lane road with treed boulevard into…

A two lane road.

And now what if I make both intersecting roads four lanes?

What a powerful way to visually work through your options to check for how it feels and how it scales. You can sit down with the stakeholders and try things out, then do your more detailed designs, analysis and eventually design on the winning combination.

There have been a few comments on previous posts about the building models. In today’s example, the building models are adapted from something in the Revit Architecture tutorials. You could use many formats of 3D models of houses or buildings that are similar to what might be on your site. If you don’t have access to a good match, or you simply aren’t ready for that level of detail, Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler has some tools to help you sketch in buildings of the right size to act as conceptual placeholders.

Here is an example in the northern portion of the community where I might want to try out a building footprint.

If you’d like to get some more ideas of how to use Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler, you should check out the classes at Autodesk University this month. Don’t forget that most Autodesk University lectures are recorded and will be available online after the event.

GS4570
Be a Hit: Work on your A.I.M. with Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012
Lynda Sharkey
Virtual
November 29, 2011

CI4018
AIM at Perfection: Create Conceptual Designs Faster with Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012
Scott Kent
Lecture
December 01, 2011 1:00PM

CI5669-L
Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler (AIM) for Success
Keith Warren
Hands-On Lab
December 01, 2011 5:00PM

GS4396
Geometry On Demand: Tap into the Power of 2.5D Data with Autodesk® LandXplorer®, Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler, and Autodesk 3ds Max®
Dan Campbell
Lecture
November 29, 2011 10:00AM

GS4630-L
Infrastructure Conceptual Design with the New Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012
Christopher Andrews
Hands-On Lab
November 30, 2011 10:00AM

Master Planned Community: Parking for the Medical Campus

A few days ago, I wrote Master Planned Community: What Do You Mean By Medical Campus? where I talked about how difficult it is to communicate our early designs.

In that post, I showed an image of the hospital and some conceptual medical buildings. There was also a conspicuous lack of parking and a big beige rectangle.

As the design evolves, more detail can be added. Let’s say our zoning code normally requires 1 parking space for every 2 beds in the hospital, and 1 space for every 200 square feet of medical office. We can run those calculations and work with our structural engineer and architects to come up with a parking garage that meets those requirements. That garage is added to Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler along with any more design refinements. We’re still very conceptual, but as each aspect of the multidiscipline project matures, our model becomes more detailed.

From this level of detail we can have meaningful conversations with stakeholders. We can sit down with the design team and really understand each other’s ideas.

We can show the hospital owners what the visual impact of this type of parking garage would be, and go through some logistics scenarios. Should there be valet parking? What kind of sidewalks would serve the hospital best? Where would staff park? Could it be taken underground? What would that look like?

Another conversation that we might have is with the zoning board. We could use this model to show them what following their current parking requirements looks like. Then, we could use the model to highlight how our community has been designed to be walkable and served by a light rail and bus system. We could tell them how the hospital is offering attractive incentives for their staff to live within walking distance and to use public transportation. We could propose an exception to the staff parking requirements. Then, we could show them what a smaller parking structure looks like and quantify how much more space could remain green and pervious.

Just a few thoughts.

**For those of you that have asked for Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler tutorial videos- hold tight. I am working on editing a few right now, and there are other things in the works.

In the meantime, Lynda created a few videos for the release of Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler this summer that you should check out.

Read all of the posts in this series: http://bimontherocks.typepad.com/my_weblog/master-planned-community/

Master Planned Community: What Do You Mean By Medical Campus?

The other day in my post A Master Planned Community in Three (or One Hundred?) Acts, I mentioned we are working on a Master Planned community on my team.

We had blocked off a large area in early plans as “Hospital and Medical Campus.”

The other stakeholders asked, “What does that mean?” and I answered, “You know, like a hospital and stuff.” “What kind of stuff?” “Doctors offices, labs, etc.” “But what would that look like? All I see is a big colored in area. A really big colored in area. Does the hospital take up that whole area?"

As someone involved in design, this is where the voices inside of your head start screaming things. The voices say things like:

“I don’t know, what do I look like, an architect?”

“Haven’t you ever been to a doctor’s office?”

“<audible, exaggerated sigh>. Obviously buildings and parking lots and stuff. You know, enough parking to meet code, and stormwater management and curbs. Lots of curbs.”

Then as an engineer you throw something out there that looks like this:

You pat yourself on the back and say, “There ya go! That should answer your questions!”

But they still have a look on their faces that tells you they aren’t seeing it. In the old way of doing things, we’d have to build out a lot more detail in Civil 3D, probably do some hand sketching or even bring out the hand puppets to explain our vision. More time building a detailed model means more time redoing the detailed model if they don’t like what they see.

What has really helped our team is bringing information together in a visual way with Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler. The image below is a combination of the road linework from Civil 3D (with appropriate styles applied in AIM), a Revit model of the hospital from the architect, some conceptual additional campus buildings that Arnab mocked up in AIM.

This model is by no means complete. The hospital isn’t finalized. Detailed grading is still underway. Landscaping is conceptual. There is no parking shown just yet. But even as we move slowly through the planning stage, we bring things together to see them in context. To communicate. To help our stakeholders understand what we mean without any eyerolling or pantomime. Or hand puppets.

So now I can say- “THIS is what we mean by a medical campus.”

And then I can ask a question that we never want to ask. We avoid this question like the plague. We run and hide at the thought of this question.

We can ask our stakeholders, “What do you think? What would you like to see?”

And instead of just crying inside as they answer it, we still have plenty of time to make changes because we’re still in planning.

A Master Planned Community in Three (or One Hundred?) Acts

I really enjoy listening to This American Life. They tend to break up their show into acts. I also like reading Girl’s Gone Child. She is breaking up the story of her new twins into acts. Since it is Thursday afternoon and I am out of original ideas, I’m going to steal theirs.

If you’ve ever worked on a master planned community, (or an area structure plan, or neighborhood design report, or zoning change application) you can relate to the idea of the project happening in pieces. Maybe you start on paper or you get some paper from the planner (as I mentioned the other day.)

Then the client or the planner comes back and says that they want something more iconic. Or curvy. Or whatever.

So you get it into Map 3D and build some basemap information. Then you evolve into Civil 3D, and maybe take it out to Impression for some super early 2D sketching. It’s still rough, but you figure you are starting to get a better handle on it.

And just when you think you really know what you are doing, the architect comes to you with the concepts of the buildings, or residential products, or single family homes.

Then the environmental agency says there is no way you are getting approved for a zoning change without a stream restoration. And the transportation planner at the DOT says you need a new connection to the light rail system and a much better entrance to the arterial road.

And you have no idea what that all really means. How much room does a hospital really take up? You know the footprint, but what does that mean in 3D? How tall should the condos be? What is the implication of having lanes with parking behind vs. recessed garages?

Arnab and I have been working on a master plan as a team along with some external engineers and architects. The process has been greatly improved by using Infrastructure Modeler. I know, I work for Autodesk. I have to say that. But… really. I cannot tell you how useful it has been for communication with each other. The “Oh, I see it now!” moments of clarity happen daily. Sometimes hourly. Or minute-ly.

We’ve changed our minds completely several times when it was still early enough to change. We’ve added things, tried things, erased whole villages and tried again.

I will do my best to document the process over the next few weeks in as many acts as it takes, because it is a story worth telling. A story of starting rough and tweaking, changing, evolving. About not fretting over perfect just yet because you are busy being a hungry caterpillar in the hopes of someday becoming a butterfly. Or maybe a luna moth. That has yet to be determined.