At Lands End

Introducing Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012!

I am pleased to announce the release of Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler 2012! 

Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler conceptual design software helps engineers, GIS and planning professionals create, evaluate,and communicate compelling infrastructure project proposals in the context of the built and natural environment. Use Infrastructure Modeler to drive faster stakeholder buy-in and more confident decision making with visually rich proposals of your next transportation, land,water, or energy project.

Thousands of you have tried out Project Galileo on Autodesk Labs and given us feedback on other related technology projects.  I hope you see that we're doing our best to incorporate feedback from real customers and provide a solution that blends well with other products that you use, but simplifies some really complex workflows today.

Check out the product pages (http://www.autodesk.com/infrastructure-modeler) and download the trial.  We'll be rolling out additional languages later this year. The help documents should be accessible from the product pages.

We'll post plenty of blogs and tips on Infrastructure Modeler capability and we look forward to hearing your questions and comments.  Some of my favorite parts of Infrastructure Modeler are:

• Thematic stylization of all kinds of 3D assets
• Tooltips... Really... They're cool...
• The scripting engine (watch for the docs to be posted here)
• Making really big projects
• Video production
• Growing 3D data into 2D... pipes can be used for all sorts of interesting features if you use your imagination
• Proposal switching

There's much more than that.  Have fun exploring!

Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler 2012 is available widely around the globe and is even on the Autodesk EStore.

As always, if you have questions, let us know!  If you have screenshots or cool videos... send them in!

Questions and comments can be sent directly in to infrastructure.modeler.support@autodesk.com.

Great example of Project Galileo in use

We've been receiving some fantastic examples of Project Galileo users putting the technology into use on highly relevant civil, architecture, and planning projects.

Last week, I received a great example of a roundabout visualization in which Project Galileo technology was used to merge GIS and Civil data to allow the project leads to produce visualizations and animations of the site.

The project is referred to as "Albida Roundabout in Kuwait City" and is being built by BCEOM.  Here's a screenshot:

Here's a video of the project.

Thanks to BCEOM for submitting this great example of Project Galileo technology in action!

 

AGIT 2011 in Salzburg - Hands on Session - July 6th

Imagine, as an AEC firm or Government Agency, you were able to win more work or project approval by presenting your design proposals in the context of ‘What’s Already There’ inside a 3D digital environment? Imagine planners and engineers involved in infrastructure planning quickly and easily create conceptual designs for infrastructure proposals? Imagine you’re able to sketch new designs digitally, in context, and create and manage different design proposals in one model? Imagine to take these ideas back into Map 3D or Civil 3D for refinement?

 
People are visual animals. They understand pictures better than words and if those pictures form of a visually compelling 3D model, it’s easier to make better informed decisions, win work, and gain stakeholder buy-in.
This session will introduce you to the new technology. We will practically experience how to grow an infrastructure model from CAD, GIS and Design data and use multidiscipline workflows in conjunction with Map3D and Civil3D. From the conceptual design point of view we will sketch in ideas in different proposals and see how an infrastructure projects can help GIS, BIM and CAD Managers improve efficiency in the very early stage of the Conceptual Design planning phase.

So for those of you attending the AGIT in Salzburg this year I would be happy to welcome you to my class on July 6th at 4.30pm.  

Andreas

Anyone tried Project Photofly and Galileo?

I'm really hoping that some of our great users try out the new Project Photofly 2.0 and Project Galileo together.  What would be better than creating a model of a building or other real world asset automagically from photos and then dropping into the right place in Galileo?

http://labs.blogs.com/its_alive_in_the_lab/2011/05/project-photofly-20-now-available.html

The likely workflow would be:

1. Download and install Photofly and make sure you understand the directions (not a lot) 
2. Take a bunch of photos of your favorite object
3. Process them in Photfly to get a mesh
4. Export the mesh as an FBX or OBJ
5. Load it into a project in Galileo

Let us see what you can come up with?

Chris

 

New Galileo Video posted on YouTube from AEC Media Day

The Labs team has posted a new Project Galileo video on YouTube.  The video is narrated by Lynda Sharkey and explains some of the conceptual design postioning that we are exploring with the technology.

 

 

As always, Lynda does an excellent job and we'd love to hear more of your feedback on Project Galileo.

 

 

To 3D or not to 3D?

Hi folks,

Sorry it's been a few weeks.  Busy time around here in the saltworks.

Over the last couple of years, I've become convinced that 3D for geospatial applications is neither a fantasy nor impossible nor a gimmick.  Working on LandXplorer and now Project Galileo and all the great customer feedback that we receive have demonstrated to me that most users actually expect that 3D will simply be a ubiquitous technology available to geospatial, civil, and architectural applications, becoming better and better integrated across domains over time.

What are the infrastructure-related workflows that you think are most relevant to visualization and analysis in 3D?  When would you like to see transition between 2D and 3D?

I had an article published on the topic today. I'd be interested in your feedback either there or here.

Thanks!

 

Altering Your Project Galileo Road Styles III

In addition to the last blog i would like to talk about bridge and tunnel styles.

Once a road style is selected for editing you may enter the “Street Type” for this style to be set. Depending on the three options apart from roadways a specific box appears in the upper right corner of the Style Editor to select bridge & tunnel.

 
The roadway has been described already. Now we want to take a quick look at the other two options.

Starting with the Bridges, you can see some Bridge related settings. The “Bottom Surface Category”, “Outer Surface Category” and the “Pylon Surface Category” are materials to be defined in the “Default Material Group” (see Older Post).

 
The “Bottom Surface” describes the surface from underneath the bridge; “Outer Surface” covers the vertical outer side walls and the “Pylon Surface” maps a material to all of the pylons of the bridge.

The “Thickness” sets the meters between the road surface and the bottom of the bridge body.

ACTION: Enter some higher and lower values and check the preview in the style editor.

Last but not least you may specify the pylon size and the spacing between them. Check the values and position and size the pylons as you think the look best.

Road Styles can be designed as brides as well as tunnels. Even the boulevard style can be turned into a tunnel but I doubt that palm trees in a tunnel make sense, but you never know what sustainable design may produce.

 

The “Tunnel Settings” provide four categories to texture the tunnel cube. A material can be set for the top celling (Top Surface Category). This is important when a tunnel starts outside a terrain you would want to texture the top cover of the tunnel.

The bottom celling is textured under “Bottom Surface Category”, which you actually see in the tunnel.

“Outer and Inner Surface Category” describe the inner and outer walls of the tunnel cube.

The “Height” defines the distance from the Roadway (or lowest track) up to the top surface and the “Wall Thickness” is the depth of the tunnel walls including the tunnel cover.

Have a good one!

Altering Your Project Galileo Road Styles II

In today’s blog we are going to look at editing of the street styles in our Galileo project. In addition to the blog “Altering Your Project Galileo Road Styles“ a couple weeks ago we will concentrate on the UI option the application offers.

As already described in the façade style blog, the “Style Catalog Collection” provides styles of different types organized in catalogs.

So let’s start and see how the styles can be changed:

First open a model for example Tiny Town which comes with the Galileo setup. Select a road segment you want to use for re-styling today and zoom to it.

 

NOTE: With the help of the “Duplicate”/”Copy”” button you may copy your styles for changing them, instead of touching the original styles coming with the setup. The original style might be used by other road features.

  

Once the copy is created select one of the styles you want to edit and double click on it. The “Street Style Editor” opens up.

 

Here you can change the settings of the road style. The “Basic Settings” provide the “Street name” which will be the style name in the catalog.

The “Street Type” defines wether it is a road, a bridge or a tunnel your are intending to create.  Today we’ll stick to the road type.

The “Default Material Group” refers to the collection of materials and associated category identifiers which can be used within the style to map a material to specific parts of the generated road surface. Material mappings within road styles are specified using the category identifier of the material to be used.

See the coresponding “Material Group Style Editor” below:

 
NOTE: The “Default Material” is set to red when no material or an invalid category is mapped.

NOTE: As you can see there are also some tunnel and bridge material mappings for the use of the style as bridge or tunnel, but more on this in another blog.

The “#Driving Lanes” will describe the lanes going forward and backward. Changing the number of lanes will immediately update the preview of the style.

NOTE: The number of driving lanes specified in the style is only default values which are being used, if the road feature the style is applied to, does not provide its own values via the properties "Lanes forward" and/or "Lanes backward".

“Intersection Roadway Category” specifies the material to be used for intersection regions of crossing road segments via the mapped material category. Enabling the "Use Lane Markings of Category" checkbox allows you to specify the material to be used for lane markings by selecting the desired material category identifier.

NOTE: No lane markings will be generated for the intersection regions.

   

 
QUESTION: You may ask how an intersection region will look like when road segments share a crossing region but use different road styles.

ANSWER: The road segment with the highest "Importance" property set will determine the crossing region's material. Select a roadsegment, go into the ”Inspector” and set a high value for “Importance”. I have choosen the greenspace  style – because of sustainable design :-)

 

The next step in the “Street Style Editor” is to define the road segment in its profile. In the “Track Sequence” you are able to actually build your road using single tracks which are organized in three buckets - left, middle and right - which allows for definition of symmetric, asymmetric roads with and without median strips. A track is defined by geometric, visual and meta attributes which are shown as columns in the control's table view. The attributes can be simply edited by double clicking the associated cell of the table view.

So, how can this be done:

 

NOTE: Right now the “Left Bucket” isn’t working. The “Rightt Bucket” will be mirrored to create the left bucket. So you are currently not able to create asymmetric road styles except the forward and backward lanes. The “Middle Bucket” can be used to define the median.

Taken the example from above you can see 4 tracks defining the right bucket (Roadway, Curb, Bikeway and Sidewalk). Using the buttons below the table view you may add/remove/duplicate or change the order of the tracks building the complete track sequence.

From left to right definition:

First column “track name” is a pure name for the track identification.

The “track main category” can be selected from a list defined in the “Default Material Group”. The selection has nothing to do with the style rather then with the relations (a roadway can be connected to a roadway but not to a greenspace et.) between each other.

The “track width” defines the width of the element.

The inner/outer height offset values determine the height of the track at its beginning/end relative to its predecessor/successor within the track sequence. The initial height is taken from the road segment's geometry defining the center line of the road surface generated when evaluating a road style mapped to it. This way you will be able to define the road profile as a "stairway" curve for modeling things like ditches/dikes and curbs

ACTION: You may highlight the “Bikeway” and hit the arrow up button to move the bikeway above the curb. What do you expect to happen?  The bikeway is now on the roadway level.

The “track top surface category” defines the material to be applied to the top surface of the generated track geometry by the associated category identifier available through the selected "Default Material Group".

Related to the ”inner and outer height offset” you may select the material mapping from the "Default Material Group" to be used for rendering the vertical geometry that gets created if using inner/outer offset height values greater/small than zero. Since we defined only a height offset for the curb we need to  specify a material mapping for this track.

If the road surface creates gaps at the beginning/end of the road feature with respect to its surrounding terrain this gaps will closed and rendered with the mapped material defined "track cap surface category".

NOTE: if any material mapping is missing in the road style or the material mapped to a specific category identifier is invalid the "Default Material" of the selected "Default Material Group" will be used instead - in our example it's just a red color material.

Have fun with styling and send in screenshots :-)

Create your individual facade style

In today’s blog we are going to create a new facade style by using the existing façade style catalog.

So let’s start and see how the styles can be changed:

First open a model for example Tiny Town which comes with the Galileo setup. Select a building you want to use as patient today and zoom to it.

Now, open the "Style Palette" from the menu bar. The "Style Palette" is a collection of style catalogs who provides styles of different assets organized in catalogs. Within a catalog you may group your styles as you want.

 

Note: It will be good to work on a copy set of styles instead of changing the original one Therefore you would hit the “duplicate” button under catalog editing to duplicate the currently selected catalog you are in. Single styles can also be duplicated by using the duplicate button in the style section of the Style Explorer.

 

Once the copy is created select one of the styles you want to edit and double click on it. The “Façade Style Editor” opens up.

On the left side you are able to add new Layouts, which are the different representations of a style. Right now we are not able to choose them appropriate. Only one layout will be used so better stick to just one layout per style.

 

 

On the right you will find “Block Sequence”. Block Sequences can be used to define a whole façade by adding one sequence on another from left to right. The name you give is just a name or description. In this case it provides the information of the floor sequences.

In the lower part of the Editor you can change the extent of the façade preview in width and height. The “preview” gives you a direct feedback on the changes and provides a “3D Geometry” preview as well. The Size option can be used to view the adoption of styles on different façade sizes depending on the defined patterns.

To finally change the façade style you need to double click on the Block Sequence name or the edit button right next to it. In the” Block and Floor Arrangement Editor” the different floors can be designed from façade pieces such as windows, door, edges or façade elements.

 

Let’s see how this works:

First you may add some floors by giving them a name. Here the names are df, fl00, fl01 to fl03. The added floors are shown in a list on the left hand side.

Now you need to define which floor lies on what level and define their behavior. This can be done in the vertical pattern text box. In my case I have configured fl01 as the lowest level. Fl02 comes next and on that one sits fl03. But we have six floor levels in here, who does it work? Can you see the little “+” right next to fl02? This means that fl02 will be added as soon as we raise the height of the building right between fl01 and fl03.

When you are combining patterns (horizontal (floors) or vertical (cells)) you may use “+” if the pattern should appear at least one time and will be duplicated as many times as needed compared to the façade size. You may use “*” for the same reason except that it does not need to appear.

To extend this a little bit you may use” ()” in combination with “+” and “*” to apply this to groups.  For example (lfo1, flo2)+ means that level 1 and level 2 appear at least once and if the façade height raises it will be duplicated together always.

 

After the floors have been defined we need to look at how we want the facades to be. Do we need windows, doors, stores or just a plain wall? Therefore you will select the floor to be arranged by marking it in the "Available Floor" list.

 

Now you are able to set the floor cells, which are all represented in the “Available Cell” list. The camera button generates thumbnails of all the cells.

 

In this example the cells are defined as belongings to a certain floor but can be arranged as you please. Uses double on a cell to bring it in into the “Horizontal Pattern” list.

NOTE: The cell will be added on the curser’s position.

In the graphic below you can see the whole facade arrangement as it shows up in the preview areaw within the editor:

Fl00 is defined as the lowest lewel in the façade and is followed by fl01. Fl02 will be repeated when the building/façade heigth is changed. Fl03 is the last level which will be the top row of the façade.

Fl00 contains different cell elemnts which are shown directly in the preview. The “horizontal pattern” list shows the arrangements of the selected cells. I have used all the cells which are categorized for fl00, you may use other cells as well.

 

NOTE: when you select an “Available Floor” directly you see the attached cells in the “Horizontal Pattern” list.

According to the example here we defined the lowest floor and entered some shop windows and doors. In the preview the façade should look like the image below.

 

One more option to be aware of is the “Roof Decoration”. Not all façade styles have this but some do have a kind of stone fence or nicely designed top ending to be part of the façade.

Actually it is handled exactly the same way we do create a floor except the option that you can enter it in the “Roof Decoration” box instead of adding it in the “Vertical Pattern” list.

At the end you can close the editor and the style icon should change according to the settings you have made. Drag and Drop the new style onto the building. You my verify the correct messures in the editor when need to fit exactly the building shell.

 

NOTE: When you drag and drop the style onto the roof – the whole building (all walls) will be stylized. If moving the style to a certain façade only this one will be stylized.

NOTE: in order to stylize a building differently from wall to wall and not just dropping the style on the whole building you need to create another version of a façade style by adding a new style or duplicate the recently used and edit it.

Now happy styling :-)

 

 

Altering Your Project Galileo Road Styles

There is some great imagery submitted by our users on the Project Galileo Photo Gallery that includes Street Styles decorated with trees and lamps. Currently objects like trees and lamps may not be edited directly in the Street Style editor though they may be easily altered to include 3D models that come with Project Galileo or 3D models that you have added to your Model Catalogues. Keep in mind that street decoration is for visualization purposes only. Trees added as street decorations will not appear in the Trees table, so reporting on them is not possible.

 In this post I’ll show you how to update a Street Style to place 3D models as decorations. The Boulevard Street Style that is included with Project Galileo includes three 3D models that enhance the realism of the street itself: palm trees, a round tree base, and street lamps. 

 

Let's say that I wanted to replace the tree species, and use a different street lamp that overhangs the street. In order to do this I need to find 3D models in the Models tab of the Project Galileo Style Palette. I am going to choose a Pinus Pinaster tree from the Vegetation 3D Models Catlog, and overhanging Street Lamp. 

Locate the Street Style XML File

1. Navigate to your City Models directory where your Project Galileo models are stored. I am using Tiny Town as an example, and my City Models are stored in my Windows default My Documents Directory. 
2. Open _styles_street.xml file in Notepad or any text editor by navigating in Windows Explorer to City Models --> YourCity.files directory (in my case TinyTown.files) --> styles directory. There you will find _styles_street.xml.

Change the tree type to Pinus Pinaster

Within the Street Style, each "Bucket" may contain various tracks for different aspects of a street such as curbs, greenspace, medians, emergency lanes, and sidewalks. This will depend upon how you design the street. The Boulevard style has definition for median bucket, and for the right lane bucket (Streets are symmetrical for the current release so altering the left bucket will have no effect). Any 3D model such as a tree is added to the XML definition as a decoration. A "decoration" is associated with a track. Keep in mind that the track numbers would start with zero, so if your bucket has three tracks they will be numbered 0, 1, 2.

1. With _styles_street.xml open, look for the style with ID of "STREET_STYLE_0" and Name of "Boulevard". Note: you can create a copy of this style by choosing the opening to closing XML <StreetStyle> tags, and changing the <ID> and <Name> for the new/copied Boulevard Style. (See the image above).
2. Look for the for the current tree decoration, which is "Vegetation_3D_Models:Tree_Alexandrae". The "Vegetation_3D_Models" is a reference to the Style Catalog containing the tree models, and the "Tree_Alexandrae" is the ID of that models style definition. 
3. You'll need to find the ID for Pinus Pinaster. To do this, open the XML file for the Vegetation Styles. The file name is _styles_instanced_models_vegetation.xml and it is in the same location as the Street Style XML file. 
4. Search the Vegetation Style Catalog for the tree "Pinus Pinaster". Once you have found this Style, copy the ID "Tree_Pinus_pinaster". 
5. Back in the Street Style for Boulevard replace the Tree_Alexandrae" with "Tree_Pinus_pinaster"

Applying the Change

1. Save the changes to the _street_styles.xml file. 
2. Close Project Galileo - the Styles are stored in memory so you have to close and restart the application to see your changes. 
3. Reopen Project Galileo 
4. Navigate to the road on which you want the style applied and drag and drop the style from the Style Palette onto the road. 

There are several additional variables that may be applied to any track decoration. 

• offsetX - Adjusts the position of the model relative to its left edge. So if you want to place a lampost model in the middle of a 2 meter wide greenspace, use an offsetX of 1 meter. Or just 1 here. Note, you may use a negative number here as well to place the model to the left of the left edge of the track. 
• offsetY - Adjusts the position of the model forward and back along the left edge of the model, or in conjunction with offsetX. 
• transformationMatrix - additional alignment of the model with the road direction (use "-1 0 0 0 0 -1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1" for a 180 degree rotation; leave it blank for no rotation; use "0 1 0 0 -1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1"; and "0 -1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1" for 90 degree and 270 degree rotations) 
• spacing: gap between 2 instances along the road in meters.
• category: the category of the instanced models (currently unused).
• relativeToTrack - the decorations are associated with the left-hand side of a track and the corresponding track index is given here (starting at 0 as noted above).

Finally, I replaced the deocoration for the street lamp. The street lamp is located in the greenspace track of the "RightBucket" with a new street lamp model found in the City Furniture 3D model catalog:  _styles_instanced_models_city_furniture.xml. Changing the reference from "City_Furniture:Street_Light_1_Bulb" to "City_Furniture:Light_Street_Lamp" will use a different street lamp. Note: I also used the tranformationMatrix settings for 180 degree rotation above for this decoration. 

 

Keep in mind that you may place as many models as you like per track. You could place cars on the street, people on the sidewalk, or whatever you can think of and have models for.

Note:Models included in the Project Galileo Style Palette may also be duplicated if you would like to adjust scaling. But more on that later...