IMAGINiT Civil Solutions Blog

Generating New Revenue Streams with Reality Capture

Reality capture is a great way for firms to expand their service offerings and win business in new markets. Here are a few examples of how companies are “thinking outside the box” and using reality capture in creative ways:

• “Just in time” drainage studies. Often when people think of reality capture, time consuming survey projects come to mind. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and photogrammetry, however, dispel that perception. Recently, one of our clients conducted a six minute UAV flight and collected data on 12 acres of land. With Pix4D software and about an hour of data processing time, the client leveraged that information for a drainage study that will inform design terracing and sediment control measures. Reality capture technologies like these are a great way to offer value-added services that can be delivered quickly.
  
  
• Augmented reality for interactive media. An architecture and construction firm is working with a museum to laser scan a retired Navy aircraft carrier and create a digital model. This will be used in the museum’s interactive multimedia guide. Visitors will hold an iPad up to different areas of the aircraft carrier and on the screen, they will see animations of how soldiers would have worked on the ship during wartime. The physical conditions captured in the 3D model will serve as the basis for these animations.
  
  
• Three-dimensional printing projects. Reality capture and 3D printing are intersecting in new and interesting ways. For historical preservation initiatives, models can be used to 3D print architectural details like carvings, decorative plaster, and more. Firms are just beginning to scratch the surface when it comes to the potential of reality capture and 3D printing.

We’ve worked with numerous firms as they have integrated reality capture into their service portfolios. Based on our experience, here are three best practices that can help maximize your success:

1. Remember that reality capture is more than a scanner. To get the greatest bang for the buck from reality capture, firms must use multiple tools and specific workflows. While the data capture tools such as laser scanners or UAVs are important, the backend software tools like Pix4D or Leica Geosystems are equally important for delivering successful results.
   
   
2. Data management is an essential, but often overlooked aspect of reality capture projects. The point clouds generated during reality capture projects often contain large volumes of data that can be hard to share with internal and external project team members. Using data management tools like Leica JetStream can make the difference and vastly increase the value of 3D models.
   
   
3. Working with the right partner can help you get up to speed faster. As you enter the reality capture field, you can accelerate the path to proficiency by working with an experienced partner. IMAGINiT understands the different tools that support reality capture, as well as the workflows and data management techniques that contribute to project success. We regularly train firms in this area and support proof of concept projects that build a foundation of knowledge for teams.

Learn with our whitepaper: How to Avoid Common Pitfalls in Reality Capture.

As you consider how to expand your business with reality capture, think about how to do what you currently do better, as well as what new opportunities may exist. Don’t be afraid to use your imagination and above all, don’t let your perceptions about the technology limit you.

Clean your Lens.

How do you model a Geotechnical lens? Well first, what is a lens?

Not being a geologist I couldn’t do justice in defining what a Geotechnical lens is. Luckily enough IMAGINiT has a resident Geologist, Jeff Morrow. Not only did he work in the industry but he is also all knowing in things Civil3D. Anyway, following is what I got from Jeff.

“It is a defined volume of material that pinches out at some point: in other words it forms a “lens” or body of a locally occurring material sandwiched between two more laterally extensive deposits.  Think of the boulder clay being deposited as a glacier retreats.  Within that deposit there may be meltwater channels or ponds that eventually silt up.  These will form the lenses that eventually get overlain by the finer till and organic composites.”

In the example below we have encountered Marl in test hole readings TP126 and TP129. As a result the Geotechnical module or Civil 3D should model that strata to only fall within the allowable boundary limits.

In this example the Marl lens are between the Glacial Till strata and the Boulder Clay strata.

However given that C3D only triangulates between know points, following is what we would get. The Top and Bottom surfaces of Marl would incorrectly span across the other surface.

A solution to modeling these lens involve four main steps

Step 1.  Establish a base surface from which we can extract elevations of the outer limits of our lens. In this example our base will be the top of the Bolder Clay (see image red line).

However, based on your Geotechnical experience, and your test hole readings, you may want the average approximation elevation. You can do this by excluding the Test hole TP126 and TP129. C3D will now triangulate across the other test hole points (see image Blue line)

Step 2. In plan set the outer limits of the lens, typically utilizing a feature line. Extract the feature line elevation from the base surface.

Step 3. Add the feature line limits to the four surfaces, Glacial Till base surface, Marl Top, Marl Base, and Boulder Clay Base.

Step 4. If there are more than one lens of the same strata you will have to use a show and hide surface boundary to define each of the lens, or they will triangulate between the Lens.

In a project, if there were a number of Lens, I am sure with a little bit of programming, this process could be automated. If you have any training needs, please Contact your sales rep at IMAGINiT .

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Need to Create a Point Cloud Quickly? The Solution Doesn’t Have to Include a Laser Scanner

When people think about point clouds, laser scanners immediately come to mind as the means for capturing that information. However, laser scanners often require a major investment in time – first to scan the site and then to process the data. Image processing software like Pix4D offers a faster way to create point clouds.

Once photos are captured, Pix4D extracts a three dimensional model and point cloud from the images. The time savings using this approach is dramatic – IMAGINiT Technologies recently assisted a client by creating a 3D model from a construction site. It took ten minutes to fly the site with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and 1.5 hours to process the data. In under two hours, the client had a 3D model.

It’s important to keep in mind, however, that the point clouds generated from image processing software better suited for certain situations than others. Here are a few tips:

• Photogrammetry doesn’t offer the same level of precision as laser scanning. However, 3D models generated from photos are a fast and cost effective way to evaluate stockpile volumes, conduct inspection verifications, or support feasibility studies.
  
  
• Image processing software can be used with photos UAVs or ground-based cameras. While UAVs are great for capturing photos of large areas, image processing software like Pix4D can also be used with photos generated from cameras on the ground.
  
  
• It’s easy for teams to learn how to use image processing software. We have trained numerous clients on how to use Pix4D in conjunction with UAVs or other cameras. Working collaboratively on a proof of concept is a great way for teams to learn this technology, while receiving support from our experts.

To learn more about Pix4D and how it could help your firm, give us a call.

Infraworks 360 Models in Civil 3D 2016

James Branagan | Applications Expert

A great tool with Infraworks and Civil 3D is the ability to open Infraworks models in Civil 3D and vice-versa. This enables you to start with a conceptual design in Infraworks and import that design in to Civil 3D to continue a more detailed design. The process is pretty straight forward.

To open an Infraworks model in Civil3D start by opening an existing drawing in Civil 3D or start a new one. On the insert tab you will find an InfraWorks 360 drop down menu with two options, Open InfraWorks 360 Model and Configure InfraWorks 360 - Civil3D Exchange Settings.

 

Choosing Open InfraWorks 360 Model brings up the following dialog box.

In this dialog box, choose the InfraWorks Model you want to import. Civil 3D will determine the coordinate system of the InfraWorks model and ask you to set the coordinate system in Civil3D. You can then choose the selection area, to choose your object settings and refine the selection set if need be. Clicking “Open Model” will import the InfraWorks model with all of its settings and allow you to continue your work from there.

 

Moving Text to Elevations in Civil3D

James Branagan | Applications Expert

A very cool feature of Civil3D is the ability to take elevations that are purely text and move them to that specified elevation. This could come in handy if you have been given no other surface information on a drawing other than those elevations, and the text is all at an elevation of zero.

On the Modify tab, in the Ground Data panel click on surface. In the surface ribbon expand Move to Surface in the Surface Tools panel and click on Move Text to Elevation. Select all the text you want to move to their respective elevations and accept. You will now find that all the text has been moved to the proper elevation.

From here you can use the Text option in the Drawing Objects Definition of your surface to create a surface. However, there is no way to tell how accurate this surface is. Civil3D will create the surface based on the insertion point of the text. The insertion point will likely be close to the real elevation but you cannot guarantee that it is correct. This is a great tool for creating a surface given limited information as long as you realize the limitations.  

Roundabouts in Infraworks 360 2016

James Branagan | Applications Expert

One of the new features in 2016 version of Infraworks 360 is the ability to create rule-based Roundabouts. Autodesk has included a set of pre-loaded standards that will let you choose between urban and rural Roundabouts, single and double lane etc. which can be used to assess feasibility in context.

Roads must be created as design roads and there needs to be an intersection where road sections cross. 

 

Left clicking on the intersection will enable you to edit it and access the Intersection asset card.

 

In the asset card, under Junction Type, you can choose between a 4-way intersection and a Roundabout by selecting the plus or the circle icon. You can choose from a list of pre-loaded standards for Roundabouts in the Standards section.

Once the Roundabout has been created, you can make edits by using the Intersection asset card or by grabbing the Roundabout arm grips at the end of each of the Roundabout arms.

Importing Sketchup models in to InfraWorks

James Branagan | Applications Expert

A great way to enhance your InfraWorks models is by adding more realistic looking buildings, city furniture or landmarks; many of which can be found, for free, in the Sketchup 3D Warehouse at https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com. Once there, find the model you want and click on it. This will bring you to the models page with the option to download it. Clicking on Download gives you two options. You want to download the KMZ file.

Once the KMZ file is downloaded, find the file on your computer. A KMZ file is basically a zip file. It stands for Keyhole Markup language Zipped.

Once unzipped, you will find all of the files and folders needed for the model. Sketchup models and Revit Models are inserted in the same way. In Infraworks click on the orange I (build, manage your model) then Data Sources. This will bring up your Data Sources manager.

Click on the first button and 3D Model which will ask you to choose the model you want to insert. In the folder you just unzipped, go in to the model file and choose the file ending in .dae. Clicking Open will insert this in to your model. Next you need to configure the model. Under Configure model, choose a type and, unless you know the coordinates to place the model at, choose interactive placing to place the model. 

Anybody down there

After installing the geotechnical module, setting up a project database and importing some borehole data, It was extremely easy to create surfaces of the different strata.

It simply involved toggling on the check box for the top and/or bottom  of each of the Strata in the strata manager dialog. The geotechnical module created the C3D surfaces for you.

OK, so we have C3D surfaces, now what!!!

In addition to the standard volume calculations, not only can we create profiles displaying the different strata, but we can also superimpose borehole, complete with the accompanying data.

The selection of the boreholes are based on a specified buffer along the alignment. To create a profile, you guessed it, Geotechnical tab, profile panel, Create command.

In the Create profile wizard, select an existing alignment, or create a new one. Toggle on the strata that you want included in the profile and toggle on the hatching if you want hatching style shown in your profile.

In the next dialog box you can define the buffer distance as well as the styles to be used to display the boreholes in profile. A list of borehole will be displayed.

Finally select a insertion point for your profile. Note, all hatching styles is accessed through asset management panel, hatching command. But unlike C3D styles the hatching styles are not dynamic, meaning that if you change a hatching style your existing profile hatching will not update. I had to recreate the profile to implement the change

The superimposed Borehole and borehole data seem to be a combination of a C3D point with user defined properties, strata data that consists of text and finally borehole strata hatching, all grouped together.

Although the C3D point labels is annotative, at the time of testing I found that the strata labels to not be a annotative.

 

However, what I was pleasantly surprised about, is that the alignment and profiles are dynamic. Changing the alignment location will regenerate the profile complete with the superimposed boreholes that fall within the revised alignment and buffer.

The other cool thing I was able to do with the data, is to use the new function in C3D 2016 to create solids from surfaces.

Now that I have a visual representation of my borehole data as 3D solids, creating a section plane in AutoCAD 3D can give you some very nice presentation models.

Keeping in line with the theme of presentation, what I thought would be a simple process of porting the data to Infraworks, ended with me jumping through some loops and hoops.

The 3D borehole cylinders had to first be ungrouped and then materials applied to each of the strata, I then exported to FBX. Only because unlike IMX export, FBX allowed me to select specific objects. After that, importing the FBX file into my Infraworks model was straight forward.

One of the issues I ran into, is that a few of the top of my boreholes were above the terrain created by model builder. For presentation purposes only, and to correctly fix this, would involve lowering the top of each borehole to match the terrain surface elevation. Not a big issue if you do this in C3D. Correct? Unfortunately it seems that if model builder was used to create the Infraworks model, connecting to the model in C3D 2016 via the “Open Infraworks  360 model” yields an error regarding the current coordinate system not being compatible. Another case posted with autodesk, and hoping for a solution. For now the workaround is to export an IMX file from Infraworks and then import into C3D.

The other issue I ran into is, you are not able to import multiple surfaces into infraworks and have them displayed all at the same time. As these strata surfaces are terrains, it seems that Infraworks uses a paste function, meaning that each surface impacts the other based on a hierarchy. So the workaround if you want to display the strata surface independent of each other, is to once again create a 3D solid and import the 3D solid into Infraworks.

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Reality Capture: You’ve Gathered the Data, Now How Do You Share It?

Reality capture is a powerful way to show existing conditions in digital form. Perhaps you use laser scanning to capture information about the interior of buildings or unmanned aerial vehicles to scan building sites. Regardless of what technology you use, the end result is the same – you have a point cloud that most likely takes up a large amount of storage space and is tough to share with internal staff and external users.

Some teams resort to carrying a hard drive with the point cloud around the office, as a way to share the data. Cumbersome at best, and totally inefficient if team members are not in the same office. Fortunately, effective solutions to these challenges now exist.

1. Leica JetStream. This point cloud data management solution compresses point clouds so file sizes are five to ten times smaller. With JetStream, point clouds are lightweight enough to store and share on internal networks. Multiple users can access a point cloud simultaneously and the compressed point cloud data renders much more rapidly. Point clouds are more usable firm-wide and project time can be reduced by as much as half.
   
   
2. Leica TruView. This technology offers a web-enabled panoramic point cloud viewer. Imagine sharing a URL of a point cloud with clients or colleagues and giving them the ability to use Google Street View type navigation to move through the point cloud. With TruView, users can view, pan, zoom, measure, and markup point cloud data over the web. Point cloud information can be accessed from any browser and from mobile devices.

Easy sharing of reality capture data dramatically increases its value. The new technologies that make this possible are exciting and IMAGINiT Technologies is excited to share them with you. If you have questions about these or any other reality capture tools, feel free to contact us.

Traversing down the hole.

Last week I posted an introduction on the Geotechnical Module. In the last couple of days I had the opportunity to test some of the basic features.

Importing bore hole data seem straight forward. Well somewhat.

Before you can import bore hole data, you will first be prompted to connect to a database, if that hasn’t already been done.

If you are connecting to an existing HoleBASE SI SQL server you will have to select the Manage Connections link.

Once connected to a database you are prompted to connect or create a new project.

 

If you connect to an existing project, any borehole data that exists in your project are automatically imported into your Civil 3D drawings

This consists of C3D points, grouped AutoCAD 3D solids and layers.

Note that when you save your drawing, the link to the project is also saved.

What this means is that, if you delete the project or if another user opens the drawing but does not have access to the project database, you have no way to resolve the broken reference. What is worse is that, you are not able to  run any of the Geotechnical Module commands. Every Geotechnical command first tries to establish a link to the project but reports that it cannot find the project. Both Autodesk and Keynetix are aware of this issue and I will post a solution as soon as I have one.  

Importing Borehole data is straight forward and both the OTB help file as well as the Keynetix web page do a good job in identifying the syntax of the data format.

Once your borehole data is imported there are some nice tools to manage and display the data

 

In the Strata Manager, the statics of each strata is displayed, number of boreholes, min and max elevations etc. You are also able to easily create and toggle the display of both the top and bottom surface of each strata, by clicking the view icon in the view column, you can also view a list of the bore holes that were used to generate the C3D surface .

The location manager, in addition to displaying a specific borehole data, you can include or exclude a specific borehole data from a surface, zoom to a borehole and toggle the display of a borehole symbol in plan, in 3D model, as well as displaying the borehole data in strip.

The hatch manager is used to set styles for hatching of the 3D borehole cylinders and well as in displaying log strips or profile areas

The Geotechnical Styles command allows you to create styles that control the way geotechnical features appear in AutoCAD Civil 3D.

 

All in all, a pretty straight forward tool for creating and viewing geological and subsurface information.

 

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