New Workflows for Clear 3D Visualizations and Sharing of Subsurface Geology

GARY MORIN: OK. No one moaned they couldn't hear me, because I talk too loud. But unfortunately I missed that off the recording.

So basically, yeah, the reason for using 3D fence diagrams is really the idea of showing in a very visual, understandable way subsurface information that is not too risky for the rest of the construction team in doing it.

So what steps do we use to generate these fence diagrams? Well, first of all is what do we actually model? So if you load it in the Geotechnical module, you'll see that you've got a field called Legend Code, Geology Code, Geology Code II. In the US you'll work with unified soil classification systems, or lithologies. What does it all mean? What shall I be working with?

Well, in reality, they split into two different areas-- physical appearance. So things like the soil classification, USCS. These will be things like CL, and ML, and codes like that. Describe how the actual geology looks-- the size of particles-- whether it's sort of clay particles, silt particles, sand particles. And it's really describing the physical appearance of that geology.

There's another unit we often use called the Geology Code in the UK. I've seen lots of people in the US calling this the ESU, or the Engineering Soil Unit, which are more describing the engineering characteristics. These bits of material have similar engineering properties-- the strength, and then the compression, et cetera. And these are basically, yeah, it doesn't really matter whether it's a silty clay or a clayey silt. The engineering properties are similar. So let's describe it as the same thing.

So, generally when you go in to model in 3D, you want to be using the engineer's interpretation of the data, not the physical appearance when it comes through. And one of the big reasons for that is complexity of the material. If you look at the soil descriptions, they can vary left, right, and center down the hole. You have repeats of it.

Now in reality, here, for instance, CL is clay, clay with some sort silty material, then clay again. That becomes very hard to model. When you've got multiple layers of it it's varying all the while. And in reality, you don't get anything extra out of your work that you do. So a lot of extra work. And it's no real benefit. Whereas the engineering unit will just say, hey, it's clay, or whatever you think is the best way of describing that material.

So if you going to do this work, make sure that the work that you've given-- the data you are given-- is including engineering units with geology code.

Then what techniques do we actually use to do the fence diagrams? Well, we're going to look at three-- well, two, and a quick look at a third one later on. One is doing full 3D modeling-- manipulating the geology surfaces so they actually represent what you think is going on underneath the ground. We're then going to look at how we can do just using 2D edit profiles, and editing the profile used directly. And there's a third method we'll look at at the very end, which is something that we're developing at the moment out of kinetics.

So pros and cons of these two different approaches actually we'll go through in detail in a moment. Full 3D modeling, this is really the way you want to go. If you are going to model data in full 3D, it gives you a better understanding, because you have to look at the whole site. You have to look at it from different angles, work out in your mind how it all goes together. So if you're going to go down the trouble of doing 3D modeling, generally speaking, yeah, it gives you a better understanding of what's going on there.

Once you've actually done the work into [INAUDIBLE] [? of ?] modeling, it becomes quicker and easier to create additional fence diagrams. You just draw them as quick as you do profile views. Let's have one there. Let's have one there. And it becomes a very quick process of generate once you've done the hard work of modeling in the first place.

Because you are using just general profile view to do this, they're all dynamic. So you can drag your alignment, see what changes are. And it becomes, again, a much quicker, interactive way. And, of course, you've got all the other benefits of having full 3D models, of doing volumes and anything else you want to take from them.

The negative side is hard to master. The workflow isn't hard. What's the master part is actually the skills, looking at where to draw the lines.

It's a bit like painting. Learning to paint is really easy. You get your paint brush, pull it in the paint, and draw on a piece of paper. Simple isn't it? To be good with it, it takes a lot of practice, understanding.

And it's really the same with 3D modeling. It's working out where to put the lines to form the geology, and move it into the shapes that you want to go. So it's not particularly hard to do. It's hard to master.

It can be for one-off fence diagrams a longer process, because you have to model the geology. You have to look at all of it. And in reality, you need more borehole data. You can't model a site on one borehole, because, yeah, all you know is that one borehole. What's happening everywhere else? You need data to do it.

Mind you, that's also a problem when you haven't got more data. [INAUDIBLE] know what you do. You don't know that site any better, because all you've got is a few boreholes, and no other information to go over. So you're going to need data anyhow.

So 2D. Yeah, for the one-off, yeah, it's faster to produce. It's easier to master-- not quite so hard to do it.

Potentially less risky. Now I said that it's primarily from the fact if you've got 3D surfaces, you could share them. And if you haven't got 3D surfaces, then you can't share them anyhow. So you could argue, well, that's less risky. But I'm not so sure.

The problem is, though, they're not dynamic. To do the 2D editing, you have to make your profile views static. Don't know if any of you have done that before with profile views, but you'll see it in a moment when we go through the techniques. It means it no longer relates to your surface.

So any changes, you've got to do all the work again. You're not generating surfaces, so you can't do volumes. Any changes in your data, you've got to do all the work, manual updates, again. If you want additional fence diagrams, you have to actually go and draw each one individually. Each one takes just as much work, OK?

So pros and cons. I think if you've got a long, linear site, and all you're doing is one central fence diagram all the way down of it, great, do the 2D approach. If you've got a more complex site, you may want to go and do full 3D modeling. But I'm going to show you both techniques here anyhow.

Grab some water.

Quick health warning. [? If you're ?] going to do this work, you need as much information as possible to do it. Don't just rely on the data down a borehole. You've got to look at background mapping, photographs, local knowledge, perhaps geophysics, extra information to really give you a good understanding.

And really, you need to be a geotech, or have a geotech on tap who you can talk to who puts you into the right direction of how you should model. Got to do that. That's the health warning on here, because you get four different geotechs, different people looking at geology, and they all have different opinions. But it's understanding what potentially could go there is so important.

So 3D modeling fundamentals. Pretty straightforward process, as I said. You basically create feature lines. I prefer using feature lines.

Two different techniques you could use. I quite often draw a polyline in plan, where I think the extents of a particular geology is. And then I convert it into a feature line and assign elevation to it. Or you're pretty familiar with working with feature lines, drawing them in 3D at the right location. Just draw them.

Drawing a feature line, perhaps use a transitional-- is it transitional-- where you actually change the height automatically as you go from one point to another on it all. It's a nice way. So if you know how to do it, work that way. And it's better, actually, using polylines. But you use whichever technique you want to do to create the feature lines in the right place.

We then basically just use those feature lines as breaklines in the surface. The complexity here is knowing which surfaces to do it in. Sounds really simple when I say it. But you're looking at your data, and then maybe up to four different surfaces. You have to add the breakline in. And it's understanding which of those surfaces are where they are.

And yeah, believe me, you think, oh, this is simple. Why is my brain getting fried when I look at it? It gets more complicated. So it's just trying to keep yourself into a nice, standard way of doing it time and time again. And again, we'll go through the techniques for doing that.

So the last one-- and this really depends on where you've got multiple pockets or lenses of the material-- is adding boundaries. So you only show the actual surfaces where you actually have that geology. So sometimes you don't need to do this. But I'll go through the technique of how you do it. I'm going to go through sort of the slightly harder technique, which is when you've got complex geology, and you've got multiple pockets all over the place. This one is the failsafe that will work, and [INAUDIBLE] ways on how to do it.

So what we're going to be doing is doing these feature lines. But what do they actually represent? Well, if you think about your geology, think about what's going on underneath the ground yourself in 3D, what we're basically doing is drawing lines. What are the edge of the geology-- the far extents of where that geology is going to be, yeah?

And you've got to think sometimes one geology is coming this way. So that's the top of, say, the peat. Another geology is coming this way. So over here is the perhaps the top of clay. So you're really thinking in 3D where is the extent of this geology. And we're going to draw these extents of these different geologies.

Sometimes you just use a line, more like a filler line, you know. You've created the surfaces. But you can see why the shape of it, it's just not looking right. So you can just draw a feature line.

Use the elevation editor to tweak it a little bit. Add it to one or two surfaces, just to make it and pull it into the right shape. Because in reality what we're doing is just sculpting. We're using the feature lines and breaklines as a means of sculpting the actual surfaces into the shapes you want them to be.

Having a good idea of your order of strata is so important. Is it sand, clay, gravel; gravel, sand, clay. Knowing the order. If you're working on, let's say here in this case the purple, which is clay, that the sand above it, this gravel behind it, understanding that as you go through is very important when you come to do the 3D modeling.

A few dos and don'ts. When you draw your feature lines, you basically don't want the geology above or below changing along the length of that feature line. Now it's for one really simple reason. If I drew this feature line that you see here all the way around, and added it to my orange here, what's going to happen to my orange surface if you add that feature line as a breakline as a surface? Any suggestions?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

GARY MORIN: Yeah. It'll triangulate it. So what basically [INAUDIBLE] said is it will triangulate it. And basically it will pull this surface all the way down over here where I don't want it to go. So if I split it, and draw that piece of feature line, then another feature line here, and perhaps another feature line here, I can deal with each one, that each has a different geology below it, as a different feature line. So I-- where a geology changes-- stop the feature line at that point.

Final thing I ought to just say here is when you do it, don't overhang, unless you're drawing the feature line at the right zed value or z value as you go along. Because what will happen, if you just design it afterwards, that will dangle down to zero, and you just make yourself more work. If you know what you're doing, you're doing it at the right elevation to start with, it's not a problem on it. So making sure when you do draw these lines they have the right elevation is important.

So let's actually go and do a bit of a demo. So just go and look at some of the material here. So we pulled in a site. And if we look at it, we have some peat, which is the gray. And over here it's set on the red, which is sand.

So we basically have a pocket of peat up here. If we look at the bottom part of the site, you can see this white--the gray color-- which is the peat. And all of these boreholes down here. But there's no sand. So it's replaced where the sand is.

So if we look at that, and we just do a quick sketches in our mind of what it all looks like, where we have that peat in the middle, and it's set on the sand, if we drew a quick cross-section through it, it probably looks a little bit like this. So you've got this little pocket of peat. It pinches together. And it's sat below the topsoil, and it's sat on the sand.

At the other end, where we have the peat and no sand, we've got a little bit of a quandary here. How does one stop and the other one start? We know it's not going to be a [? butt ?] edge. So you've got to think about how it works. My best guess here is as the peat is on the sand and in another part of the site, it's probably going to be peat's going to go over the sand here.

So basically we have the same idea here, that peat pinches out between the sand and the topsoil over here. But you notice the sand pinches out between the peat and the clay over here. Now this is the type of stuff, when you're modeling, you've got to take in your mind. You've got to look at these, sort of think about what surfaces they are, what surfaces you've got to modify.

So let's go and look at how we go about doing that. So I've got the data set here. I can make this all this dataset, by the way, available for everybody. I haven't uploaded it yet to the Autodesk web site. But I will do afterwards, so you've got the dataset, so you can try this all out on.

So we're just quickly bringing in the geology surfaces. It's a quick process. We've already attached it inside the geotechnical module. I've just created now all of the surfaces by clicking in there.

I'm now going to go ahead now and draw a Geotechnical profile view. So for those of you who haven't seen the Geotechnical module work, and this is what it's all about-- the speed in which you just import the CSV data. Then you can come along and generate surfaces. From those surfaces we can generate a Geotechnical profile view that has that information all in there.

So you can see it's a real quick process, but it's not perfect. And here you can see where we have that clash between the different geologies coming through here. We've got the peat and the sand overlapping each other wrong.

So what I'm doing here is a 3D, just turned off some of the other geology so we can see where we have these problems of the sand-- which is the red-- and the peat-- which is the gray-- overlapping each other. And we've got to work at how can we model that and put that right.

So coming back here, let's start off at the top section. We can see this peat. It's sat underneath our topsoil. And we've got these four different surfaces pulling together-- topsoil base, peat top, peat base, and sand base-- all being pinched together. So what we're going to do is draw the lines that we think represents the extents of that peat.

So I'm going to cheat here a little bit, just saving myself a few seconds of time, in that I've already got them drawn. So I'm just going to come in here, and just turn on the layer where I've got my potential polylines or feature lines already drawn. These are just polylines at the moment.

I've just noticed they've got them overhung-- over hanging. They're not really. It's just because I've got the top soil surface turned off. If I turn the topsoil back on again, I'm just altering the-- get a grip, Gary. If I turn the topsoil back on, you can see those lines just literally come over to the extents of where they are.

So what I'm going to do now is pick those. And these are just polylines. They've not got the right zed value, or z value. So what we're going to do is go and actually assign it. And we want this line-- the z value should be the same as the base of my topsoil. I already have a surface there.

So what we're going to do is actually pinch it in so it follows my topsoil base. All I do, really simple, is convert these three. I can do the third one down here, because they've all got the same geology above and below. So I can do all three at the same time.

Let's create them into a feature line. Make sure they're on no sites, so they don't interfere with each other. And we assign it the elevation here, which is going to be my topsoil base. So we want topsoil base. And all we've done there is moved it so they're all at the right zed value, ready to go.

So with that, I can now pick all three, and we can start adding them as breaklines. So again, I'm going over the top here, because when you're first doing this, you really want to go and make sure you've got your geology order all correct. I always start from the top, and work my way down. So topsoil base, peat top, peat base, clay. Get yourself into the order of doing it.

And as you do it, you get more and more experience of it. You put your self-checks in place. As you can see, I'm just going through this now for each one. Each time we doing it, it's just changing the surfaces. You can see the profile being updated. So as we're working down those four different surfaces, adding these in as a breakline to those surfaces, you can see it's starting to shape it.

So now we're going to come down and do it for the sand top that sits, the red below. And you can see that now being-- so this, you can see here, this is sand. Topsoil sand just there. So the sand top, I should say, we're going to pinch that in as well.

So we've done part of this site. We still got all this mess going down in the 3D model. But that's because we've got to come down here now, finish it off, and do the same process, but on this line here, that represents the extents of the sand.

It's just the same technique we just used a moment ago. So we pick our line. We go and create it into a feature line. But this time it's going to be sat underneath my peat. I'll have just modeled my peat. My peat's OK now. So this sits underneath my peat base. So you're using the peat-based surface, and setting the elevation height to that.

And now we just step through the same process. And we got now the peat top, the sand top, the sand base, and the clay top. So we're going to pinch those four surfaces together.

Now as I said, if you're just doing one fence diagram, this is quite a lot of work. So sometimes it may just be better doing the 2D. But if you want to do multiple fence diagrams, have volumes, this becomes a much more efficient way of working in what we're doing here and producing this information.

So we're just going through. And yeah, even when we're talking over here, in reality, once you get into the habit of doing this, this is 15, 20 minutes of work. Now this is a simple site. A bigger site will take a lot more. But then, of course, you can save a lot more times in doing fence diagrams and sharing that information.

So we've just about done that now. And if you actually look at our profile, it looks not too bad. But we still have this problem with all our data, our surfaces crossing over each other. And if you look at this area, we got our peat, and we've got the two distinct areas of peat. But we've got all of this peat material in between the surfaces that we don't really want there.

So what we can do is use boundaries now to hide that information. I could just delete those lines and delete them from the surfaces. That will be the easiest way.

But they can reappear. You do a bit more updating to your data. They reappear again. So I want more of a fail-safe, and where I can also use this technique on much more complex geology.

So what I'm going to do here is I've just picked my peat top. I'm going to create a hidden boundary to hide. I'm going to hide the whole of my site using that polyline of [? create ?] of I've already drawn. I'm using the height of the whole of my peat.

But then all I do is go back in here again, and now add another boundary, and make it a show boundary. And this is where this is really flexible, because I may have three, four, five, six, seven different areas I want to show. I just pick them.

And now we're just seeing the geology in those particular areas. We just have to repeat that process for both the peat top and the peat base. But again, it's not particularly hard. So we're just going to quickly focus on our peat base now.

And we'll just do the same process again. So we'll go through here, and we'll just literally come up, go add boundary, make it into a hide boundary. And we're going to pick the outer boundary again.

And finally, the last part of this job is just to make it show, and pick the other two boundaries. So not that one. These two here. So these are just literally polyline boundaries that I just very quickly drew. Snap into the feature line vertices.

So with that done, that's basically the whole of that geology modeled in the area. So as I said before, it's not particularly a hard technique. It just takes a bit to master working out what surfaces, where to draw the lines.

So we can see down here, as we do this, we just turn off the surfaces, you can actually see now how they all sort of pinch into each other correctly. And the beauty of this now-- the whole point of this-- was actually doing our fence diagrams. Now that I've actually modeled this geology-- we've done it this way-- if I wanted to, I'll just now go and quickly draw another fence diagram, or another profile view.

So let's just show you this very quickly here now. So we'll just come in. Click on our-- not Layers-- onto Create Profile View again. Just set some, whatever, profile styles I want to use. Another [? station ?] down here. It will do. Create a new alignment running through our site.

So this is the area where we just done the modeling, where the clay ends and the peat starts. And if you look in there, can you see that because we used all the feature lines, the way we've done it is actually modeled the joint between the two? And of course, it's AutoCAD Civil. So it's all dynamic. So we've got all the strengths, all the beauties, benefits of AutoCAD Civil.

So with those done, we're doing this all to generate our fence diagrams we're sharing with other people. So this is the really easy bit now. I just click on the Create Fence Diagram command, specify thickness, which is the thickness of the 3D object it's going to create. I'll pick my two profile views, hit Create, and that's it done.

So what we'll do now is you can see them just being created in the 3D view at the bottom. Let's just turn off all of my surfaces, so all we have is our fence diagrams and nothing else. And there we have them created from our profile views, being generated, being shown.

So if you take the 3D modeling route, yes, it's a bit more work to start with. But then you can create dynamic profiles, movement around. If our data changes, you can just do the rebuild command, and it rebuilds those fence diagrams for you using the latest information on there. So that's the best way.

But quite often you've got the pressures of work. Doesn't always dictate you doing it that way. So let's have a quick look at the way we can do it through 2D editing instead.

Going to create a Geotechnical profile view as normal. The difference here is you then use static, as opposed to dynamic profiles. Is some of this new to people-- static and dynamic profiles?

This is the key, and this is the problem with it as well, because when we come onto this-- you'll see it in a moment-- so we create and edit these static profiles-- problem is is that they're dumb. Once you've done it, you've done it. And there's no going back with them. So I'll show you how it's going to work in a moment.

When you do this, you're going to work on your profile views. Keep it simple. I've been looking at different techniques to do this. If you've got hatching going on, grids going on, you can't see what you're doing. At least for me, I have to keep it simple, because I'm stupid, OK? So I need to keep it very simple so I can understand what it is I'm doing here.

So I hide hatches. I hide grids. I also create custom profile styles so I can really emphasize the items I'm working on. And you'll see what I mean in a moment.

So we're going to work on the same data as we've just been working on. But at the north part of the site here there is no gravel. So you can see across the whole of the rest of the site, there's this green. But up here, we don't have the green. We just have the light green. So there's no gravel in these boreholes.

So when we come and look at our profile view, if you zoom into this top section, can you see where the problem is? Where the last section-- it's only a simple problem, but it shows you the ways in which you can work using this 2D editing process.

So what I'm going to do is click on the profile view, and just go to my profile view styles. Go into the Display tab here, and say to it, let's hide the actual hatching in there. So I've just turned off all the hatching so I can actually see my profile lines a little bit better.

The other thing I'm going to do is go back into my profile view properties and select all of my profiles that I've got. And I'm going to just change the style to a style that I've already created called a geology style. Nothing special in it. The only reason I do this is in this particular style I emphasize all the vertical interactions. I basically, whenever there is a vertex in your profile line, I highlight it with a little block. So I know where all the different vertices are.

So we do that. And you can see where they are. Because obviously, if you're trying to follow, snap onto an existing line, knowing where those vertices are is a lot better than trying to guess where they are using end snap. So just to make life easier again.

So with that, now you can pick these directly off your drawing. I tend to use the tool prospector, and actually pick the alignments directly from the actual tool space so I know precisely which one I'm working on. So here I want to work on gravel. So this is the entry for the gravel.

I'm going to change the style of this to Geology Edit. And I hit Apply. And you can see why. It makes it stand out. I know what I'm working on, now, what I'm about to change.

And the important thing, there's this thing called Dynamic. I'm going to change it from Dynamic to Static. That means it loses its connection to your original surface.

So it doesn't matter what happens when you surface. If you move your alignment, your static line stays the same, OK? So it's lost its intelligence. So this is the nasty, the flip side of this, of doing it.

So now I've done that, I've turned it on to edit the geometry. All I'm going to do here is quickly a new point where I want that top profile line to go. So I'm just going to drag it along and put it over here somewhere. Simple as that. So it's a simple process.

So I'll run over now to my gravel base and do the same thing again. So we'll click on Properties. And I'm going through here. Again, I'm going to change the style just to make sure I picked the right [INAUDIBLE]. I know what I'm doing. I'm not making any mistakes. And I'm going to change it into static as well.

So we just pan up a little bit. You see there's the actual gravel base. So I select on that line. I just need to-- we'll just escape for a moment-- select the one profile line there. And we'll go now to edit the geometry on that one.

So all we want to do is drag this one across. So we just want to go up and use-- I must admit I don't like this profile layout tool command. For me, I find it so user unfriendly when I use it, and working this way. But once you get used to it, it gets a bit better. Personally, I don't find it particularly friendly. But I'm adding new points in there, adding new vertices, showing you what the shape is.

And just to finish this last one off, I'm going to do it on the limestone top here. So I could just pick it off the drawing if I want to. But just for consistency, I'm going to go to my lines down on top over here.

Go to Properties. All right. That's static. Change the style. And all we do now is we can add points on here. So I was just going to go through here, make that so we can edit it all again.

So all I can do is move the points around. So what we'll do here now, just look at what we're going to concentrate on. So I could just drag-- grip and drag. That's not quite what I want to do.

So all I'm going to do now is actually just move some of the vertices. So this one here is Move Vertex. So I can pick on the vertex, and then drag it to I want to be. And you can see it's just following the shape.

So again, I can go, or I can insert a new point in this case. Let's just insert it there. So you can get the idea. You can insert points, delete points as we go through moving this to whichever shape we want it to be. And the last point there, I'll just literally insert a new one, or move that point just there. That will do. In fact, there's a little bit at the very end there, just needs tightening up as well. There we go.

So we've pinched that all together. So we're really ready now. We can go back to my profile settings, now, my profile view settings, and just tell it to show the [? hatching ?] again if I wanted to.

Now a word of warning here, there is a bug in AutoCAD Civil. There is at least one bug in AutoCAD Civil. You might not know that. But we found that sometimes when you change in the order of those vertices in the profiles, the hatching goes a little bit astray. You need to keep them in the same order, if you can. But Autodesk are aware of it, and hopefully that'll be fixed there.

But with that done, if we just update now our fence diagram, you can see how it's updated the end. So there are the two different techniques-- the full 3D modeling method, and the 2D modeling method.

See how we're doing. OK.

So now we've created our fence diagrams, we want to share them. Let's put them into InfraWorks. So this is really straightforward. We can use an export command that we've added in the geotechnical module just to actually put those fence diagrams-- the boreholes, into its own separate file. Then we import them into InfraWorks not as an AutoCAD Civil drawing, but as AutoCAD 3D objects. And that's the important thing, is you've got to do it as a 3D objects.

And this is a very quick video. But it shows you the principles behind it. So we're going to go-- can you see this export command? So we can export the plan symbols, 3D boreholes, and the fence diagrams. And all we have to do is just give it a name.

And basically it's just doing a WBlock. It's just creating a drawing just with this information in. So if you've got a complex story, and lots of site information, lots of other information in, it's just extracting you the Geotechnical data-- nothing else. And it automatically opens the drawings for you. So there we are with our 3D objects in here ready to go.

There is actually a little bit of property data in there. So we actually have got whether it's the borehole ID, if you click on one of the cylinders. If you click on one of the actual fence diagrams, it will tell you what material it is, whether it's clay or whatever in there as well.

So once you've done that, you're ready to go into InfraWorks. And you just click on your data sources. Click on Import a File. And I say, you're not going to Civil. You're using the 3D objects.

If you use Civil 3D surfaces, all those different surfaces, it will just merge them together, and make one surface for you-- one terrain. So you don't want to do that. You want to leave it as these 3D objects.

This is slightly speeded up. Takes two or three minutes to upload it. But once it's uploaded, you just then have to configure it. So we're just going to click on Configure.

And configuring primarily means specifying the right coordinate system. So you obviously you have to draw this in the correct coordinate system for when you import it into InfraWorks work, so it matches.

And the other thing is Apply a Feature Type. At the moment, there is no geology feature type in InfraWorks, so we're just using City Furniture. For what we're working at the moment, that works fine. But that's it done. So now when we zoom in onto our site, we should see at the top left there our geology being pulled through, being shown in InfraWorks.

So the whole process, whether you use 2D or 3D modeling isn't that intensive amount of work. Just learning the techniques, the mastering the 3D modeling, is a little bit harder. But actually it's not a hard process overall to get the data in there, to share that, to visualize it. Here we're using InfraWorks, but take it straight into Navisworks, take it into Revit, same principles apply getting that information in.

If you're working with geotechnics, you're doing it in your own borings. You're probably aware there's sometimes a bit more information than just geology material. What happens if we want to see things like contamination levels, ground water, blow counts? How do you go about visualizing those in 3D?

So I don't want to do too much of a sales advert on here. But we develop Geotechnical data management software. That's what we do. This is all we do is generate software. We generate the Geotechnical module for Autodesk, and we have its big brother that does a bit more. And we do data management.

By using those tools, you can do a few more things. So one of these is these XYZ, or XYZed. Very similar functionality between the two of them. That generates point groups and services inside Civil 3D.

So basically what we're doing is generating any data that we store inside HoleBASE. We can come and show that in the 3D environment. So here we're just showing things with n-value returns on there. Here we generate their surface that shows levels of contamination across the site, because we got the data, essentially. So all we're doing is pulling this information out.

So here we've got very similar fence diagram we had before, and this XYZ command, which is showing me all the data that we have available inside our database HoleBASE system. So here we've gone into our groundwater locations. And we can tell it to filter out the groundwater, or any information we're doing it on.

So here we're doing it on sort of at the time of drilling. And it's going to create a AutoCAD point group. So let's call it groundwater. Tell it the elevation, how highly we want to plot it, which is based on the depth of where the strikes were found, the groundwater levels were found. We can add attributes, or any other information related to it into the AutoCAD database. And we can pull that through.

And now we zoom in here. It's just using a standard point block marker, or a point market, to show us where that information is. You can see there we have our point group.

So I'm going to go through that again, but this time do it slightly differently. Let's do it on environmental data. So again we can filter out. We want PIDs, which is this type of environmental data. We only want those that are part per million recordings. We can even theme the data inside HoleBASE-- so all the ones that need remediation. So these are high levels of contaminants that we've got across the site.

Let's work out where we want to plot them. Do we actually want to show some of the contamination readings beside it? And there we have this new point group.

But it's a point group. I can use any marker I want to to represent this data. So here's one I've done before, big red disks showing where we've got high levels in pollutants across the site.

Well, let's do the same process again, but not to high levels of pollutants. Just ones where we just need to go and investigate it a little bit more. And we'll just go through the same process.

And again we do it again. So we got themed values now showing us all different levels of data across our site in this 3D visualization technique, which is a lot easier to understand, a lot easier to share with clients, with your team, than traditional 2D drawings with it all.

I'm using the same technique again, back to my groundwater. But what I'm going to do here is tell it to generate a surface for me. So we're going into HoleBASE, pulling out this data, that telling it to generate a surface. So now we've got a quick model being produced showing me the geology in the area, levels of contaminants, water locations, in a 3D visualization which you can put in with any BIM system.

And so I get really fed up seeing wonderful BIM models, things floating around in space, and there's nothing underneath the ground. They just float there. Yeah. So my mission is to get fence diagrams and other information to be pictured underneath it all. But now you have a really simple, straightforward work process that can do that.

Just to finish off, I did mention this before. And there is a third technique to modeling-- or there will be soon. We're working on it. It's hard work, but we're getting there. And that is basically to be able to update your 3D model, but from the profile view itself. So, similar to what we've just been doing with 2D editing, but actually updating the 3D model.

So this is, I think, Autodesk will say the safe harbor thing. What you see next may or may not happen. Don't make any business decisions based on it, or blah, blah, blah. But we're hoping this will be out very soon.

So it's easy to master, blah, blah, blah. Let's just go and show you it.

So similar data. You see all this edit section command. And I want to select my AutoCAD profile view. It's what we just created a moment ago. And we have this simple interface. And as I click on the different geologies, can you see it's actually highlighting those geologies? It's making it obvious which ones you're about to work on. And if we hit Select, can you see it's actually changing the profile styles of the ones we're going to select on, i.e. these are the ones you're going to edit now when you start editing this. So it's making it really straightforward.

The idea here is, depending on how many you click, then hit Draw, here I'm just going to replace along this length of chainage between those two points that profile line with the new one I've just drawn. So I'm going to do the same thing again, but this time say replace the profiles between for both my clay base and my gravel. I follow this new line I'm just drawing now. And you'll see that my clay, which is above, and my gravel now follows that. I'm at the edge of the gravel, so it's not extending the base.

So let's do that again, but this time we're going to do it for the gravel base and our limestone top. So let's click on limestone top again. And I'll just go draw. So all I'm doing is drawing what I think it looks like.

The beauty is it's updating the profile view. And if you notice on the 3D, it's updating the 3D at the same time. So it's trying to make this whole process a lot more intuitive, easier to drive, than trying to do it through the 2D method or the 3D method that I showed you before.

And so we've been working on this for some time. Had a few setbacks. But we think we're very close to it now.

So look at this last little example. I'm just telling it to remove some of the vertices. So you can see the 3D model, and now it's nice and flat. I click on Draw. And I now just draw in a bit more carefully how I think the shape of my geology is around here. I think it's like this. It's a snap, because I want to jump it onto that point. That looks good to me. That's it done. And look at the 3D profile updated for you all.