Geodesign at Asia Pacific User Conference

From  November 5-7  Esri Asia Pacific User Conference (APUC) took place in Auckland at Sky City Convention Centre. The Conference was hosted by the company I work for, Eagle Technology Group Ltd. We had the privilege of having a number of people from Esri at the conference including Jack Dangermond, Bernie Szukalski, Mary Jo Fraley, Dave Wrazien, Derek Law, Nathan Benett, Michael Boryski, Dean Angelides, Leonard Jayamohan, Michael Kim, Dave Buyers, Linda Peters and Sandy Szukalski.


Plenary session

I had the privilege and honor of presenting at several sessions. Most of these presentations were about CityEngine and geodesign. The first task was to prepare a 10 minute demonstration of CityEngine in geodesign for plenary session on first day of the Conference. If you are familiar with CityEngine and it's features you know it is a difficult choice on its own. Plus, I had to demonstrate the other parts of ArcGIS and their relevance for geodesign. For this very short demonstration I have decided to demonstrate the following workflow:

• Create a new subdivision in CityEngine
• Export designed options to file geodatabase
• Run analysis on new subdivision in ArcScene
• Export layers from CityEngine to WebScene

If you would like to see the video of the presentation follow this link and skip to 2:19:41 for start of demo.

Here are some screenshots form the CityEngine project made for plenary session.

Screenshots above show two alternative designs for this subdivision. First one is a high(er) density residential with grid road pattern. To make alternative design a bit more interesting we went with radial roads and low(er) density residential option with inclusion of open/green space and trees planted on some parcels.

One of features in CityEngine 2012 is ability to visualize buildable volumes. These volumes are defined differently for different district plan zones. Screenshots below show buildable volumes for different zones in different colours.

Here are few more screenshots from the project.

Generated design options were exported to file geodatabase and used in ArcScene for analysis. Here is how data looks in ArcScene.

Lastly, the selected layers from scene in CityEngine are exported as WebScene. If you would like to have a look it is available on ArcGIS.com. You will have to use WebGL capable browser like Chrome or FireFox.

Geodesign workshop

My second engagement was conducting a half day workshop titled "Geodesign – Using ArcGIS to Improve the Design Process". In the first part of this workshop we briefly discussed the principles of geodesign. To get everyone engaged I devised an activity where each team of four carefully picked attendees had to produce first draft design of subdivision  in Auckland. Design teams had a mixture of representatives from organizations like local government, consultants, utilities, conservation. They used very simple tools - coloured pencils and printed black & white map. The key here was collaboration like in every geodesign project. The second part of the workshop was all about CityEngine. We discussed basics of CityEngine and explored some possibilities for rule development in this example of subdivision.

Third task was a breakout session on "Using CityEngine 2012 for Geodesign" on Tuesday. In this session I gave a brief overview of CityEngine and discussed with the audience some options and approaches taken  in example shown in screenshots above. Slides from the presentation will be available on NZ Esri Users Group web site.

All work I did for the conference would not be possible without support of several people. On of them is my colleague Bernice O'Hanlon who designed "Option A" and "Option B". Another big Thank You goes to esri Zurich staff Gert Van Maren and Matthias Buehler.

CityEngine 2012 - First look

CityEngine 2012 is imminent and there are several new features worthy of your attention. Some of them will be of interest to GIS professionals only but there is plenty of new functionality for everybody.

Here are key new features:

• 3D Editing of generated models
• Full support for file geodatabase
• Web Scenes sharing via ArcGIS Online
• New CGA functionality
• New examples
• Licensing mechanism update

Here are some details about above points.

3D Editing of generated models

Until now it was not possible to edit models generated by rules. Now there is a set of basic 3D editing tools and functions that allows SketchUp like editing. Edited multipatches can be saved back to the file geodatabase. To get most out of it check out the Tutorial 14 Basic Polygonal Modeling.

Full support for file geodatabase

The big improvement is import and export of textured multipatches. Not only that textures are supported but one can choose to append to existing feature class, update it or create a new one. This will make it much easier to create several design options for planners and designers.

Web Scenes sharing via ArcGIS Online

Scenes created in CE can now be shared with much greater audience. The scene is uploaded to ArcGIS Online and there you specify how it will be shared. Some examples are already live on ArcGIS.com 3D Web Scenes page. This is an excellent opportunity for planners, urban designers, landscape architects to present solution to wide (or limited) audience. Just to remind you that your browser must support WebGL. Latest versions of Chrome and FireFox work just fine. Below is an example of tiny web scene exported from CityEngine before it is published to ArcGIS Online.

New CGA functionality

New envelope operation is set to be an instant hit with urban designers and planners. It allows you to visualize build volumes. When used in tandem with mass models or as-built representation one can quickly find out problem areas. Envelope operation is also nicely demonstrated in this short video.

For more accurate analysis go to ArcGIS and use Intersect 3D tool.

Before publishing your scene as Web scene you will most likely use reduceGeometry operation to reduce number of vertices. For troublesome geometry use cleanupGeometry operation.

For full list of changes check the CGA Changelog in CityEngine help.

There are also changes in user interface. Icons on toolbars are now in single colour - black. 

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And now something little bit different. I have a privilege to present a half day workshop on Geodesign at Asia Pacific User Conference in November in Auckland. Several papers about use of CityEngine will be  also presented. Hope to see you there.

Asia Pacific User Conference 2012

Every year in November members of Esri's user community in New Zealand gather at New Zealand Esri User Conference. This year is different. This time it is not just a New Zealand conference but the conference for Asia Pacific region. For this conference we are expecting about 500 visitors from whole region and that gives us new networking opportunities. 

The Conference will be held from 5-7 November in Auckland at the Sky City Convention Centre.
Esri's founder Jack Dangermond will be here as well as other speakers from esri.

With increased number of participants there is an increase in the number of paper submissions. There is just under a 100 papers submitted and review and selection process is now under way.

With increased coverage area there are more vendors showcasing their products and solutions. The list includes IBM, Telvent, Schneider Electric, TomTom, Terralink, GBS and others.

Before the Conference there will be a number of workshops (half day and full day) covering topics from LiDAR and 3D to GeoDesign and Project Management.

To find out more about the Conference check the Esri Asia Pacific User Conference page.

NZ User Conference is know for a good atmosphere and most of the conference dinners had a theme. The theme for this conference is "A day at the races" since it will be in the time of Melbourne Cup. Feel free to take your own spin on the subject and get that fancy outfit.

Take a look at some photos from past conference dinners and see you there!