Is Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler a GIS tool? Yes!

I am currently on a trip visiting customers and partners in Germany and France.  Many of the customers here are interested in using 3D and BIM to explore the as-is environment for large urban areas.  I've gotten a few questions about whether or not Infrastructure Modeler is a GIS tool.

Here's what I say:

Q: Is Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler a GIS tool? 

A: Short answer: AIM provides GIS capability that is part of the Autodesk Infrastructure solution for geospatial professionals 

A: Long answer:  GIS is a product or system that stores, displays, and analyzes information that has a spatial component related to real world coordinates.  By definition, AIM is a GIS application.

Here are some of the GIS features of AIM:

• FDO data, terrain data, and models with accurate geolocation information appear in their correct real world position
• Geospatial imagery and coverage layers may be superpositioned according to user priority
• Every asset has a real world orientation and position
• Models can be built that are 100s of miles in dimension
• Assets can have attributes in addition to their position and graphics information (pipe condition, material, type; building age, owner, address; street condition, speed limit, surface material, for example)
• AIM can display unlimited thematic views of spatially arranged assets based on attribute values
• Many, many versions of spatial data with attributes can be stored in AIM to show the same data at different points in time or in different states
• Assets can be selected (queried) by spatial position or by attribute values
• Sketched or imported models without spatial positioning are assigned a spatial position and can be augmented with attributes
• Scripting tasks can allow more complex report generation and analysis such as generating 2D buffers, inspecting bounding box information, summarizing attribute values on selections
• Data exported with AIM also are exported with spatial positioning information (applies to 2D GIS export and FBX export)

 

Theme this!  

Roads themed by attribute value against a black-and-white urban scene.  

(Data courtesy City of Vancouver.)