A Major Leap in AEC and Infrastructure Visualization: Enhanced Interoperability Between 3ds Max and Civil 3D

GABRIEL AMOSIESEI: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining. Welcome to our class, A Major Leap in AEC and Infrastructure Visualization, Enhanced Interoperability Between 3ds Max and Civil 3D. I'm Gabriel, being manager of Arcadis Visualizations, and, of course, I have a wide experience on design and 3D visualizations, being involved in different project phases from bids and tenders to the execution phase.

I'm collaborating with all disciplines, including architecture, infrastructure, water, and environment for key companies or public administrations from around the world. My main role as a manager is not only to manage the projects and the client expectations but also to develop and improve our team workflows and capabilities.

TARIK ALBOUSTANI: My name is Tarik and I'm joining Gabi in this journey. I've been in Autodesk since two years. I work at in Autodesk as a senior consultant with over 12 years of experience in architecture, engineering, and construction. I have a background in architecture, engineering, and building technologies, and I've been working in manufacturing, construction industry, and BIM implementation through different industry, greenhouses, telecom industry, and building.

GABRIEL AMOSIESEI: And we'll talk about our collaboration and how we manage to bridge the interoperability gap between Civil 3D and 3ds Max, especially when it comes to road infrastructure projects. Today, we'll have an overview about our capabilities and services required in Arcadis Visualization. We'll discuss about challenges and workflow, project inputs, and how we work previously. We will show you how we enhanced efficiency with automation and how we improve our productivity, fixing interoperability issues between 3ds Max and Civil 3D.

And of course, we will draw some conclusions and present the main benefits following our collaboration with the Autodesk team. Let's have an overview first. Arcadis Visualization team is based in Iasi office, a cultural city of Romania, full of history and talented people who are experts in graphic design, architecture, landscape, and software development, leading the visual communication of the new concepts and solutions that define the future.

We have extensive skills and capabilities, offering an array of outputs such as classic still images, motion graphics animations, realistic 3D videos, 4D phasing animations, virtual panoramic tours, as well as interactive applications or VR and AR experiences. Our most frequently requested services are infrastructure project videos and static architectural renderings.

Challenges versus workflow. Creating video representations of infrastructure solutions is a highly complex and time consuming visualization service. Even with significant budgets and tight deadlines, can be stressful, leading us to consistently improve workflows and technical processes. With Tarik's help, we managed at first to resolve one of the most important challenges-- streamlined communication.

It was made by implementing the Autodesk Flow PTR platform to our workflow. This platform met our requirements effectively, simplifying and standardizing our communication and collaboration with internal stakeholders and external clients. This experience provided us with confidence and assurance that Autodesk solutions are the most appropriate for our workflows.

Project inputs and previous process. Usually, for infrastructure projects, we receive CAD drawings from AutoCAD or Civil 3D as an input files. These plans are created by various team within Arcadis and external companies. The technical plans may contain 3D elements, such as road surfaces, lighting poles, and barriers, alongside with important 2D elements like road markings and traffic signs.

While 3D elements created in AutoCAD and Civil 3D are easily and accurately imported into 3D Studio Max, certain proprietary AutoCAD or Civil 3D 2D entities, including blocks, text, and line properties, cannot be read by other software due to their creation algorithms. Translating markings and roadsides from 2D input into a 3D environment for detailed visualizations is very time consuming and requires significant effort. Recreating and accurately positioning road markings is one of the most time consuming and challenging tasks for infrastructure projects.

We usually receive input with road markings shown as 2D or 3D lines. These lines have specific AutoCAD properties like type, thickness, and gap length. When importing these files in 3ds Max or other software, we can only bring their outlines on the same coordinates. Since the properties of the markings in AutoCAD or Civil 3D are unique and cannot be transferred upon import, we used to skip this importing and create them manually into 3ds Max based on the input as the reference on another monitor.

Previously, traffic line lines were extracted from roads and recreated in 3ds Max using tools like Civil Road Marking Style Editor or Dashed Line Generator Script. However, these solutions have some drawbacks. Let's see some. For example, Civil View creates markings in 3ds Max formed by a continuous plane on which a specific material is applied with a white and black rectangle as the opacity map.

Depending on the dimensions and characteristics of the marking, the rectangle is mapped longer or shorter. But the marking is not based on a UV map that can be transported to other rendering software if needed, because it uses only the properties of the bitmap. Also, Dashed Line Generator Script creates the marking from a selected continuous spline in an editable spline interrupted in segments to which you can assign thickness, width, and gap distances, and the properties of the line to be visible in the viewport and rendering as usual as an editable spline in 3ds Max, but will not create a surface, only spline segments with a certain thickness, which can make the scene quite heavy and difficult to manipulate.

And the lines must be recreated from scratch if changes occur on the surfaces on which the marking should be visible. So both methods require time and attention taken from a couple of hours to even a week or even more for complex projects spanning long distances or with multiple junctions. One key factor importing impacting hours on our infrastructure project is the creation of traffic signs.

Traffic signs received in Civil 3D files often include text within hedges, particularly for signs displaying locality names or speed limits. Unfortunately, text from AutoCAD or Civil 3D files typically cannot be transferred to other software, leading to missing information when importing traffic signs into 3ds Max also.

Enhancing efficiency with automation. After several discussions with Tarik and Autodesk team, we have concluded that, to optimize working time on infrastructure project, it is essential to get the assistance from exporting text lines in line with specific cut properties for seamless integrations into 3ds Max. Tarik's team offers a straightforward and precise solution to the interoperability issue between Civil 3D and 3ds Max for exporting marking lines.

By running a script in Civil 3D or AutoCAD, the script reads visual properties of the line width and line type gap, creating a clean polyline outline. This outline can be easily exported to any software and even transformed into a 3D surface. Beyond this, the CAD script was developed to read various text types and their fonts, converting them into exportable surfaces in other software. Additionally, creating required road signs is made simple in just a few steps using the script. Interoperability and improving productivity. Tarik?

TARIK ALBOUSTANI: In the interoperability part, we started from the requirements of many files as used by the Civil department and delivered to the team in order to render them and deliver high end visualization. These files comes with several issues need to be solved and addressed during the rendering and remodeling part, starting from the point of having the 2D lines dashed to be turned out to fixed mesh and flipped in order to animate the scene.

Also in infrastructure project, it's quite common to have signboards and street boards, and these signboards, they come with many symbols and type of text and they need to be meshed and fixed and flipped, as well as in the hatches area and the materials. These kind of processes is very time consuming and considered in a high demanding work by the visualization team manually.

This code tries to address these four points and automate them by streamline this process and enhance the efficiency and improve the interoperability to be seamless between the two softwares and make it easy to be triggered between these two softwares and the teams, as well as make it user friendly for the users.

GABRIEL AMOSIESEI: Frequently, technical files from AutoCAD and Civil 3D are combined with various other drawings and may contain multiple references or hidden layers that result in issues like overlapping lines when imported into 3ds Max or other software. These scripts offer valuable functions beyond basic import tasks. It can clear selected splines and adjust line and surface colors from Civil 3D to align with 3ds Max Gamma specifications. This feature proves especially beneficial for maintaining accuracy in design elements like traffic signs during imports into 3ds Max. Let me show you a video presentation that shows how the scripts are working.

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GABRIEL AMOSIESEI: Conclusions and benefits. To the implementation of these scripts, our team has successfully bridged the gap between Civil 3D and 3ds Max software platforms and overcome interoperability challenges. The streamlined processes not only eliminates that need for redoing manual the road markings or the street signages but also ensure quick and accurate transformation of data resulting in time savings and improved project efficiency. Thank you very much for your attention and contact us if you have any questions.

TARIK ALBOUSTANI: Thank you so much.