What's new in CityEngine 2015

New version of CityEngine is out. Elliot Hartley already mentioned it in his blog post but there are some other changes. One prominent change is Scene tab. Here is the default appearance (for Redlands Redevelopment project.

From this it may not be clear what is the left square used for. It is used to assign a colour to that layer. Simple click on the box brings up a colour selector and result is like below.

Another new feature of Scene tab is ability to create layer groups . In Scene tab right mouse click and from context menu select New, Group Layer

New group is empty and one can just simply drag & drop layers into the group, just like in ArcMap. Of course, new group layer can have a colour assigned. If it is assigned it overrides colours of layers within it.

From CGA standpoint getTreeKey is important. From help documentaion:

The unique TreeKey of the shape being derived, formatted as a string list. The TreeKey is a list of integer numbers denoting the path from the root shape to the shape being derived in the shape tree. Each number denotes the 0-based child index

Sample code for using getTreeKey

CGA Code Init--> print(getTreeKey() + " - Init") center(xz) extrude(10) comp(f) { front: Facade} Facade--> print(getTreeKey() + " - Facade") split(y) {'0.5 : Floor }* Floor--> print(getTreeKey() + " - Floor") split(x) { '0.1 : Wall | '0.3 : Window | '0.1 : Wall }* Wall--> print(getTreeKey() + " - Wall") Window--> print(getTreeKey() + " - Window")

and it's output

0; - Init
0;0; - Facade
0;0;0; - Floor
0;0;1; - Floor
0;0;0;0; - Wall
0;0;0;1; - Window
0;0;0;2; - Wall
0;0;0;3; - Wall
0;0;0;4; - Window
0;0;0;5; - Wall
0;0;1;0; - Wall
0;0;1;1; - Window
0;0;1;2; - Wall
0;0;1;3; - Wall
0;0;1;4; - Window
0;0;1;5; - Wall

More on new features when I spend little bit more time with this version.