At Lands End

Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler prototypes Integration of Building Energy Analysis with Green Building Studio

Check out this awesome prototype of selecting a building in AIM and displaying its Energy Utilization Intensity, Annual Energy Cost, and Annual Carbon Emissions using Autodesk Green Building Studio in concert wit AIM.

More on the Building Performance Analysis blog!

How to flatten terrain coverage easily in AIM?

Howdy folks,

today I would like to talk about a nice little feature which enables you to flatten out terrain patches. Recently a couple of users humbled across this section and therefore I’d like to post it today.

So why would you flatten a coverage?

You can draw a coverage representing a green space or a beach. These patches will eventually be part of the terrain and texturing it. This means that the green spaces or beaches or whatever you draw will follow the terrain.

But there are other use cases where you need to have a coverage which is flat. Think of parking areas or football fields. You might also use a coverage not only for texturing the terrain rather than flatten the terrain. Think of water areas (in case the terrain underneath is grumpy) or leveling a proposed site before you place a building or some structure on it for planning purposes.

In order to achieve to flatten a coverage you have two choices:

1. Draw or import a coverage in AIM. Zoom into it and select one of the vertexes. Use the little
    blue cylinder and move one vertex up/down just a little. This will flatten the coverage at an average     height of all vertexes.

2. I must be said that this workflow is a bit tricky and therefore I want to provide a better workflow based     on a little script.

• Unzip the Download FlattenSelectionSet.js
• Open the model in AIM
• Select the feature(s) you want to flatten
• Show the JS window (ribbon -> Manage -> Create and run Scripts)
• Press “load” in the scripting window (top left) and select the unzip JS script
• Press “Start script” in the scripting window (center left)

 

• NOTE: the coverage will be flattened to the height of the lowest vertex and is set in the 4th row
  of the script: geom.To3d(bbox.Min.Z). In order to specify s custom height like 145 m for example oyu need to change it to geom.To3d(145.0).

Hope it helps and feedback is welcome.

Colorize Building models in a more realistic way using aerial images

Today I want to show you how to colorize your model instead of using the predefined 3D façade elements. Thanks to Manuel, who came up with this.

So why would you want to do this?

As you can see in this infrastructure example your focus lays upon the civil design of the new road segment. The surrounding models aren’t too relevant in a high level of detail for this purpose, although you might want to give them a realistic look by choosing common colors from within this area.

So here is how your workflow will look like:

• Open your desired model in Google maps or Bing maps. Make sure you turn on the bird eye perspective, so you can see the facades.
• Create a snapshot of an area which you think the facades are representative for the model.
• Download GIMP (or choose another tool to do the following)
• Open the screenshot in GIMP
• Select “Window” in the menu and go to “Dockable dialogs” to select “Palettes” (see picture)
• Go and create two new palettes as shown in the picture. One for the facades and one for the roofs if needed.

          

• Now you will need to open the “toolbox” and select the “color pipette”
• In the settings of the pipette you might check the radius of the scanning size. NOTE: when using the pipette on the image you will see the actual radius size.
• You need to select the “add to palette” option

  

• Make sure you have selected the right palette (roof or façade)
• Now you can go and click through as many facades as you need. Note: you will see the palette filling up.
• Redo it for the roof palette. 

 

• Once you are done you will find your two palettes there: C:\Users\xxxxx\.gimp-2.6\palettes
• Note: settings are found under EDIT/Settings or Preferences

 

• Go and open them in an editor and select the RGB color descriptions
• Download the file "Download RandomBuildingColors" and unpack it.
• Open the “RandomBuildingColors.js”  file and enter YOUR new colors according to the once you will find in there.  Replace them with yours.  Safe it!
• Do it for roofs and facades.
• Go back to your un-textured AIM model and open the “Create and RunScripts” under Manage
• in the menu.
• Open the “RandomBuildingColors.js”  and hit “Start Script”

 

• Voilà you are done!

 

AU 2011 Infrastructure Modeler 2012 class tutorial

Hi folks,

I prepared a class for AU 2011 that some of you have asked for.  Here it is!

      Download AU2011ClassData-CAndrews-GS4630-L (~100Mb)

Note that much of the data in the class come free on the web, courtesy of Massachusetts GIS, and should only be used for educational purposes.

To get started, find the docs\GS4630-L-CAndrews-Handout.pdf file in the directory structure of the zip.

Note that if your system hides file extensions when you are using Windows Explorer, you may need to show them to be sure you're dragging and dropping the right files into AIM.

Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

Have a good weekend!

Randomizing data in Infrastructure Modeler for demos and show

At Autodesk University last week, Scott Kent and I both presented classes where we featured the ability to randomize the appearance of assets in Infrastructure Modeler.  

We both introduced the idea of randomizing some mock up data mostly for demo purposes (it's hard to get redistribution rights for really good looking models), but it turns out that I've had several questions from folks on how to do this. Many people are turning to data sources like Open Street Map* or building footprint layers from local governments to have a context within which they will create their detailed project scenes.  But they find that they don't know how to introduce some visual complexity that adds richness to that background data.

Using JavaScript and Style Rules, it's possible to randomize data in several different ways.  Here are a couple of use cases:

• Random roof slopes
• Random building facades
• Random roof materials
• Random building heights
• Random tree heights
• ... and many more

I'll address the first three items here.

Random roof slopes

Did you know that in the Configure Dialog, nearly every field there can be populated with any of the following:

• fixed values (1, SomeName,...)
• FDO expressions (ROOF_HEIGHT *3.25, NAME + " " + ALT_NAME)
• JavaScript
• Attributes (NAME, DESCRIPTION, ALTERNATE_NAME)

The JavaScript route is what I often use to randomize roof slopes.

In the Roof Slope text field on a vector buildings import, type in the following:

    Math.random()*35.0

Push OK and refresh when you have finished your other configurations... what do you see?

That's a quick and dirty mechanism that does produce some undesireable results.  It's odd to see a gigantic airport or warehouse building with a 35 degree pitch, but then visit DIA...

I'm hoping you can see how this might also be useful to do things like randomize the heights of trees!

Using JavaScript for the whole import

Here's a secret. Underneath the covers, we are using JavaScript to drive much of the import process.  So why not give our users access to that?  We do.

In the Configure Dialog, after you have configured all the easy stuff, switch to the Script tab:

You'll see many of your configuration changes presented to you in script. Here you have the option to edit that script!

Note: Once you Edit the script, you will no longer be able to change the configuration on the other tabs unless you Revert.

If you dare, click the Edit button (you can always Revert, so it's hard to do harm).

 

The script should become editable. I then add a few lines such as this:

switch (SOURCE.FeatId % 3) {

case 0: BUILDINGS.ROOF_MATERIAL = "Roadways:Mat_MV_Diamond02";

break;

case 1: BUILDINGS.ROOF_MATERIAL = "Roofing:Shingles_Composite_Grey";

break;

default: BUILDINGS.ROOF_MATERIAL = "Roofing:Wood_Tile";

}

Note that the materials for the roofs come from the names of styles in the Style Palette.  I insert the text so that I see this:

Then I push "OK & Refresh" and see what happens.  If the import appears to do nothing, then I can check the Log window to see if there are any reported JavaScript errors.

TIP: When you're typing in the Script window, there is some help.  Try typing the letter B then press CTRL+Space.  See what happens.

Using the Style Rules

To style buildings with random facades, we don't even force you to use any scripting. You can use a really simple style rule to add a good amount of variety to your buildings.  Here's what you do:

1. Open the Style Rules window
2. Click on the Buildings tab (if it's not already highlighted)
3. Add a style rule using the green plus (+) sign and give it a name
4. Open the style rule and add a couple of styles
5. Then expand the window to the right a little bit... and enter some numbers into the Probability column; the numbers represent how often you want each facade to appear
6. Accept the changes by clicking OK
7. Press the green Refresh button on the lower right of the Style Rules interface to execute the rules
8. See what happens!

Here's an example of these techniques applied to a model I created for AU.  I hope this tip helped!

* One of the biggest missed opportunities in the crowdsourced geodata movement is that the OSM folks didn't think to have data collectors at least approximate the number of floors of assets like buildings.  That would have made it 100x more useful for folks like Infrastructure Modeler users.

Counting all assets in your Infrastructure Modeler model

One of the most basic questions that I'm getting about some of the models that we're showing off is, "How many assets are in that model?"

It turns out that there is no easy way to get this information from the user interface, but it's a pretty simple task with a JavaScript.

Here's what you do:

1. Open Infrastructure Modeler and load a model of choice

2. Select Window-->Scripting Window and 

3. Paste the following code snippet into the window:

// Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler 2012 JavaScript example
// Name: Count All Model Assets

var tcount = 0;
var db = app.ActiveModelDb;

print();
print("Counting all assets in model");
print("----------------------------");

//Loop through the tables
for (i = 0; i < db.TableCount; i++){

	//This line skips some internal tables that don't need to be counted
	if (db.TableNames[i].slice(0,4) != "__jo"){

		//Sum the number of records in each relevant table
		count = db.Table(i).QueryRowCount();
		if (count > 0){
			print(" "+ db.TableNames[i] + " " + count);
			tcount += count;
		}
	}
}
print();
print("Total selected: " + tcount);
print();

4. Click Start Script

5. You should see some output like this:

This post has also been posted to the Infrastructure Modeler 2012 WIKI Help system.

 

Selecting assets using FDO commands in Infrastructure Modeler JavaScript

One of the basic questions that I get asked is if you can do spatial selections in Infrastructure Modeler.  Out of the box, the UI does not have spatial selection capability beyond the manual selection tools. However, using a little bit of JavaScripting, it's actually possible to access the FDO 2D buffering and selection commands that allow you to do 'traditional' buffered selections around assets in your model.

I've posted the details of the script on the Infrastructure Modeler WIKI.

Here's an example in which all of the buildings with their centroids within 100m of two selected road segments have been selected:

I'll be using this next week to demo the difference in selected building floorspace between two different proposed bus route segments.