The development of digitally enabled cities is receiving a great deal of attention in the geospatial and design communities and the creation of building information models (BIM) is harnessing the ideas, creativity and needs of architects and engineers. To accelerate the take-up of 3D design in support of digital cities the software LandXplorer combines CAD and GIS data. Meanwhile 3ds Max Design software is supporting architects to meet their digital design workflows. Neil Brooker explains how new software development is helping to enable the digital city to become a reality.
These days it seems that the only certainty is that the world is changing. The volatile economy, the threat of global warming, uneven demographics creating a shrinking workforce, crumbling infrastructure – the list of the serious challenges we face goes on and on with depressing predictability.
{sidebar id=387 align=right} However, it is some consolation that like chameleons we tend to learn to adapt and innovate in order to survive. In many fields, technology is leaping ahead, providing us with the means to improve the way we do things and to invent methods to meet the challenges.
The geospatial world is no exception. In fact, some may argue that that this community, alongside those involved in the design and construction of buildings and infrastructure, are in the frontline of transformation. There’s no doubt that flexibility of thought and working processes is needed to maximise the promise of these technological advances. And in the geospatial and infrastructure sectors this means thinking outside traditional discipline-specific constraints, working more closely with other professionals and looking at the wider picture.
Great Advances
The progression of GIS itself has been rapid and exciting with demand for geospatial-enabled data for mainstream applications exceeding all expectations. But just as pressing has been the need to integrate this geospatial data with engineering and architectural design driven mainly by the need to protect the environment we do have and to create more sustainable communities for the future.
And, of course, the technology in the architectural, engineering and construction industry has advanced at a similar pace. For example, many see the current economic situation as a driving force in the continuing take-up of building information modelling (BIM).
For years the industry has seen exceptional profits – and consequently architects and engineers have had little incentive to change their working processes. Now, however, the acute need to increase productivity and efficiency and to differentiate from competitors is causing firms to consider the options more carefully. To the point where some of the larger contractors are considering working only with BIM-enabled partners.
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And it’s not just the architects or structural engineers either; civil engineers are also being asked by partners to participate in the BIM process, allowing designers and contractors to share information such as elevations, cross-sections and quantities of earthworks so co-ordinated design changes can be made within the process. Increasingly, geospatial data is needed to build up the entire model in a realistic and meaningful way.
In tandem with the growing traction of BIM, other complementary technologies such as simulation, analysis and visualisation are also advancing and being added to this rich blend. For instance, last year Autodesk launched a version of 3ds Max especially tuned for architects and engineers – 3ds Max Design.
Some multi-discipline firms are now extending their use of visualisation beyond the photo-realism needed for most architectural designs to the accuracy required for civil engineering. For example, the global consultancy Scott Wilson, uses 3ds Max Design to precisely model their new road schemes.
{sidebar id=389 align=right}They use these models to demonstrate to the public the impact of the new road; CDs are provided with interactive maps enabling interested parties to click on a junction and view the appropriate visualisation. They also use the 3ds Max Design’s Mental Ray daylighting system to analyse the position of the sun at different times of the year to ensure the safety of drivers.
Suddenly, it seems that global forces are demanding a new type of design. For a start, there’s a desperate need for us to make our buildings and infrastructure more resource-efficient and, as a result, we have to change the way we plan, design, construct and operate our homes, offices and civic buildings.
Alongside this, there’s the question of increasing urbanisation in many parts of the world and a flight to the suburbs in others. With both these trends, there’s an acute demand for clever, sensitive planning to ensure our urban environments are safe and pleasant places to live and work.
In other words, government agencies and others require a fully-synthesised and holistic view of the structures within their city – not just for the present, but also to support the entire lifecycle. But, evaluating multiple models of the same building or environment to piece together all of the data required to support this urban lifecycle is no longer appropriate.
After all, a building is a complex web of systems, all precisely balanced. Buildings exist as a fully-integrated part of an urban environment which includes a complex labyrinth of utilities, telecommunications, roads and open spaces. A building lives through its connection with the systems of that environment; a system of systems which connects to another system of systems.
LandXplorer Landmark
Consequently, Autodesk’s timely acquisition of the German firm 3D Geo last year marked a milestone in the whole issue of convergence and urban modelling. 3D Geo’s flagship product LandXplorer was, of course, already well-known to geospatial professionals and visualisation experts alike, not least as the software was used to produce a large-scale 3D model of the centre of Berlin. The model, which contains over 40,000 buildings, can be explored on line through Google Earth.
But, Autodesk’s interest reflects a consensus that the creation of digital cities is not just a one-off, experimental exercise. The software vendor’s policy of “democratising” emerging technologies by pulling them out of their niche and making them available to all mainstream designers is well-known – and it looks as though the user-friendly LandXplorer will benefit from this treatment too.
Already, Autodesk’s data access technology, FDO, has been added to allow direct access to geospatial data, whether held in a file format such as shp or sdf, or a spatial database such as Oracle Spatial or MySQL. This also means it can aggregate and visualise data from AutoCAD, AutoCAD Map 3D, Revit Architecture, Topobase and 3ds Max.
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The advantage this brings is a real flexibility in level of detail (LoD) and an accuracy and precision not possible with other products on the market or indeed with Google Earth. In general, AutoCAD Map 3D can be used to create and manage geospatial data and also create and manage 3D block buildings (LoD1) for the LandXplorer city model. More complex building designs with a higher degree of rendering (LoD 3 and 4) can be created for landmark buildings or those of specific interest and brought into the LandXplorer cityscape.
Likewise, 3ds Max models can also be taken into the LandXplorer environment. These may be highly precise and realistically rendered buildings, but could also be other visual features such as cars or vegetation. However, LandXplorer can further strengthen the 3ds Max model by enabling geospatial data, such as land use and environmental information, along with utility information such and pipe networks and civil engineering to be integrated into the model too. The visual impact of the LandXplorer city model can then be heightened further by the addition of meteorological features such as sun elevation or cloud cover and movement.
In this way, a digital city created in LandXplorer can bring together in an open platform the inside (heating systems, utilities, furniture, walls, doors, windows and structure detail) and outside (road access, surrounding landscape) with the infrastructure below the ground (underground water, wastewater, gas, power and telecommunication systems) integrating GIS with CAD, BIM and underground asset data.
Imagine a local authority or municipality is concerned about the effect a new high-rise building will have on the immediate vicinity and they want to look at it in its geographic context. If they already have a digital city model, they can drop in the architect’s accurate 3ds Max model into the wider cityscape, maybe do some simple shadow analysis and have a very visual way of assessing whether the building will enhance the area or become a white elephant, blocking sight lines or stealing light from its neighbours.
In fact, the potential of this combined digital ecosystem is seemingly huge, especially when combined with the simulation and analysis capability of contributing software such as Revit. For instance, it could, in future, be used to measure the load impact of a new building on a utility network, how a building will shade the surrounding area at different times of the day and year, how much daylight will be available in interior spaces at various times of the day, how noise from a nearby football stadium will impact residents and how the building will affect traffic patterns.
And it also provides a business tool to help better plan, see, sell and operate the sustainable development essential for tomorrow’s high performance conurbations. On a more commercial and practical level, it can also demonstrate the proximity of a particular location to airports, motorway networks and recreation and educational facilities.
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Autodesk sees the convergence of CAD, GIS, BIM and visualisation technologies as just the start. Its infrastructure modelling team is currently working closely from experts from its gaming division (between 85 and 90% of all contemporary computer games have been created using Autodesk tools) to discover ways to demonstrate human behaviour patterns.
This opens up another new field of research and experimentation. For example, potentially this could be used to assess the impact of a terrorist attack or – on a more day-to-day level to assess traffic flow.
But how will this progress affect the geospatial community in particular? Many professionals in this field we speak to recognise that they should be thinking and working in 3D – and modelling their geographic data this way. However they are still deciding if it’s really what they want and assessing ways to go about it.
LandXplorer is a powerful tool, but it’s also relatively straightforward to use and affordable and, despite its strength requires only mid-specification computing power. The fact that it is now under the Autodesk umbrella makes it more accessible for users outside its former central European base.
There’s no doubt that LandXplorer and digital cities will accelerate the take-up of 3D design. In return, the sector will be able to make decisions that are far better informed and a new understanding with partners from other disciplines.
Over the past eighteen months or so, Autodesk has announced it is working with three major global cities on pilot digital city schemes. These go from the beautiful, historic birthplace of Mozart, Salzburg in Austria, to Incheon, a brand new urban experiment in Korea – with the forward-looking Canadian city of Vancouver in between.
But, the benefits of digital cities are available to smaller architecture or engineering practices and local authorities or municipalities too who want to begin to look at the wider picture. These might want to model a relatively small area of a city or town, but nonetheless, the integration of buildings, infrastructure and geographic features will still carry great value both to the users themselves, to their clients and the wider community.
Of course, digital cities won’t solve every global challenge we face today. But it could help create more appealing, practical and safer cities for the future. In short, the type of city we’d all like to live and work in rather than spend our time trying to escape from.
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Neil Brooker is Autodesk Geospatial Technical Manager for Northern Europe
