From the Ground Up

Photo montages with the Infrastructure Premium Suite - Preview

Been working on how to work up a photo montage today and actually found it very easy to do.

So here's a preview of what I will write up for next week.

Yes it looks a bit tame compared to augmented reality in Infrastructure Modeller, however these are images you have to provide in environmental statement reports.

To be continued...

Jack Strongitharm

Point Cloud Feature Extraction in Revit

If you are a user of Revit, there is now some of the same capability to extract to Revit objects like we have had in Civil 3D for a little while now

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/scan_to_BIM/overview/

Here is a little test I just did with some Faro data around a motorway bridge where the resultant surface ignored the bridge structure and the passing noise.

Jack Strongitharm

Project Inspire hits Autodesk labs

Need an Inspire-compliant client to query and publish metadata?  Check out Project Inspire for AutoCAD Map 3D on Autodesk Labs.   http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/inspire/

For those new to Inspire, it’s an EU directive aimed at promoting the sharing of spatial data between agencies. It uses the OGC’s web service standards to ensure that the various software tools connect to data in a standard way and means users don’t need to spend valuable time searching for data and converting between file formats.  More on Inspire here: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Kudos to this goes to Anthony Neal and co in Autodesk Consulting for leading the development of this important tool for customers across Europe!

John Allen

A new alliance

I see Jack beat me to it to blog the news that Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software have entered into a strategic alliance agreement, but, having worked for both organisations and knowing both product portfolios well, I thought I’d add some views.

For those that don’t know PBS, it is the software division of post-room giants Pitney Bowes was formed following PB’s acquisition of MapInfo, Group1 Software and a few others. The interesting part for most of our customers will be the MapInfo product line, which specialises in Location Intelligence (essentially GIS with a focus on analytics) and asset management, as well as back-end tasks such as geocoding and routing. 

For users of AutoCAD Map 3D out there, you will see that these areas are not things we at Autodesk have traditionally focussed on, and I would argue that our strengths of precision design in geographic context and GIS/CAD integration are not things that the MapInfo products handle particularly well.  The good news is that we both have similar outlooks when it comes to open access to data so the products have always been able to co-exist well in combination with a common data store.

I’m sure there will be more to come as we explore this alliance further but for me this is a great start to the new year and should bring some exciting prospects for our combined customer base.

John Allen

Autodesk and Pitney Bowes software enter strategic alliance agreement

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/autodesk-and-pitney-bowes-software-enter-strategic-alliance-agreement-2012-01-10

 

Jack Strongitharm

How the Cover & Slope Pipe Rule Works

When working with pipe rules, specifically the cover & slope rule, you may be surprised with the end results after drawing your network, or applying the rules. There is quite a bit going on in the background when this rule gets applied, so after this is understood you may have a clearer picture of the results that are shown in your design.

via beingcivil.typepad.com