Leverage ESRI online and BIM360 to make Dynamic Infraworks Project models

DAVID LAWRENCE: So I have audio somewhere, but-- so while we're watching this, since we don't have audio, I'm going start asking questions about the room so I know how to tailor things to you guys. This class is about getting GIS data into InfraWorks, basically, and manipulating data while in Arc to get it into InfraWorks. So how many of you have actually used ArcGIS? OK, we've got a good portion of the room. That's good. How many have used InfraWorks? About the same number, OK, that's good. Civil 3D? OK, we've got a good group here, OK.

How many of you have Enterprise portals that you're trying to connect to? OK, got a couple. Because that's a little different. And then what type of industry are you in? Transportation? OK, I've got a couple. Power? OK, OK. Piping and sewer-type work? All right, what else do we got? I covered some.

AUDIENCE: Water.

DAVID LAWRENCE: What?

AUDIENCE: Water

DAVID LAWRENCE: Water, got water, OK. Water. Mining? Anybody? OK, lots of mining.

AUDIENCE: Environmental.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Environmental, I was waiting for that one. That's where I come from in their original days. All right, so I'm going to ask, if you can, participate. Because I had a series of unfortunate events this month, and my slide deck was on a hard drive that got corrupted. So I'm going to be doing a lot of things live. I'm going to be doing a lot of things on the fly with you. So if you don't like that, I'm warning you now. And there is the keynote going on right now. So I'm giving you the out, and I won't be offended if you want to get up and go.

So that being said, I want to get you guys covered on what you want and what you're trying to achieve for your class. And for those of you that are right about here, I do have a bad back, so I probably won't be roaming around as much. So I'll be leaning back like this to look at you guys.

Have you guys-- how many of you have actually used this process to get data into InfraWorks? Have you done this at all? OK, so nobody. Good, OK. All right, so about me. I'm Dave. I'm the guy sitting here behind the podium that half of you can't see. I worked at AECOM for about 20 years where I first started in construction design and realized I needed more information than what CAD was giving me.

So I started working and using LISP to convert data from the data outputs from ArcGIS from ArcInfo to get it into CAD and CAD attributes and blocks. And that was cool, but it really didn't get me where I wanted to go. So I wanted to I wanted to get to 3D. So I started doing 3D, and I started doing 3D Studio Max. And that was cool, but it didn't have the data.

So then when this thing called Land Explorer came out, I started going after that a little bit and started to utilize it. And then we ended up doing this project. And I'm going to flip over to that really quick. And no, it doesn't have sound, unfortunately. We did this project where-- and you can see I don't have a lot of slides, so I'm going to be very interactive here. Ba, ba, ba, [INAUDIBLE]. Oh, it is not here. I won't play that video then.

So we did this project with the Navajo Nation. And the Navajo Nation-- and that's what was in the mapping, our nation book. I'm going to get up and lean on the podium a little bit so I can see people, because I hate not being able to see people. So we started working with the Navajo Nation. And they had a ridiculous amount of data, down to one foot terrain data and all the data that goes associated with that.

And trying to get that into an InfraWorks model was quite challenging in and of itself. And so you needed a lot of processing, a lot of different things to get that data in from Arc. And so we built a lot of Python scripts and different things like that do it. Now, we have ArcConnector. So ArcConnector is going to help us to be able to get data in and out much more efficiently into the software.

So what is ArcOnline? So I've got some basic definitions that I pulled from the web. And they're very generic. So I was talking to somebody the other day, and they asked me what ArcOnline was. And I had a person that-- oh, don't take pictures of that. That's a generic slide. No, go ahead, go ahead, sorry. So I was talking to as a person. I had a group of people. One was a GISP one was a BIM director. And then one was me.

And the person who was the BIM director asked what ArcGIS Online is. And I said, well, it's kind of like BIM 360. And the GISP just cringed. And so it's not like BIM 360. It's a way to store your data online, but you get a lot of backend processing. And it's kind of like-- that's the same kind of reaction that you get when somebody says, well, what's BIM 360 like? And somebody says, well, it's kind of like Box, and I cringe at that.

So if you ever have seen some of the backend processing that goes into both of those applications, there's a lot that goes into it. When you load your Revit model up into BIM 360, it automatically does clash detection for you. It automatically does plan sheets. It automatically does a whole lot of stuff that you don't have to think about. ArcOnline does a lot of the back stuff, too, and you can also program it to do a lot more. And I'm not going to go into a ton, a ton of depth on ArcGIS Online and what it does. So if you're looking for somebody to teach you ArcGIS online, I'm not going to do that. Because this is an AutoDesk conference.

So I'll cover a little bit. So ArcOnline, you can do a lot of different things. You can build Python scripts, ArcPy, Model Builder. You can build APIs to tie into different things. And there actually is work of several APIs to do it directly connecting through to other applications that you might imagine would be useful, especially at an Autodesk conference. So We're working on a lot of different things to tie it together.

We're going to talk about these different things. So what is ArcOnline? Any questions that you are hoping to learn about ArcOnline? Sorry, that was about my limit of standing for a little bit. I have a really bad back. Questions?

AUDIENCE: So this isn't bidirectional? ArcGIS [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: Currently, yes. So in the roadmap, there is discussions of being bidirectional. Unfortunately though-- well, fortunately and unfortunately, the discussions going forward need to address permissions. So a GIS administrator doesn't necessarily want a BIM director, a CAD director to be changing their GIS data. So right now, it is one directional, and it's dynamically updatable. So if you hit Refresh, it's going to refresh. And that's in version 19.2. So 19.1, it's not.

AUDIENCE: By refreshing, you're saying if I change my ArcGIS Online data when it's coming from my portal, then it's updating in InfraWorks.

DAVID LAWRENCE: If you hit Refresh, yes.

AUDIENCE: You have to--

DAVID LAWRENCE: You have to open the model and hit Refresh, yeah. And I can get to see if my InfraWorks model loaded yet. Ha ha.

AUDIENCE: So do ou know, is Infraworks still a package that you can get independent of their collection?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yes, you can. Well, let me step back on that. Are you an EBA customer or subscription customer? So those are two different things.

AUDIENCE: I'm a maintenance customer.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Maintenance customer, OK. Typically, I think you buy it in the package at this point, but you can also buy it as individual subscriptions. It's cheaper if you need all the things.

AUDIENCE: Cause I don't need the collection.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: You should be able to buy it individually. But honestly, I don't get into a whole lot of that. I'm an EBA guy, so I get that kind of things. All right, anybody else about some basics of that while this loads for me? Because our internet is really slow.

AUDIENCE: What is the overview of workflow from online in InfraWorks?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Well, there's two pieces to that workflow. That's actually a good question, Dave. I know this guy from a long time ago. So I'm going to be very sarcastic with him on certain things. So don't be intimidated if I'm sarcastic with him. I won't be with you. But Dave makes a good point. What's the workflow from Online to InfraWorks? So are you talking public data or private data, because those are two totally different things?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] public.

DAVID LAWRENCE: So public data, public data is posted up into ArcGIS Web. And once you post it, you actually enable the Creative Commons licensing and the license of to where that can be shared within your organization, within your group, or within your personal folder. And I'll get onto Online and show you that. But once it's uploaded, that's set. Once it's set to private, you can search by the tags. And in the tags, it will get you the data that you're searching for.

So if I search for hydro in Arizona, I'm going to get everything that's got a tag with hydro in Arizona. So once you get that, then you select the-- and once I get that pulled up, I'll pull it up. And I apologize. Normally, I'd have a lot of slides, and I did. So once you go to the interface, you select the ESRI connector, you log into your account. So you have to have an ESRI account. And there is a way to get one free for a certain amount of time, and I don't know what that is. So you'll have to double check on that. Once you get on there, you can hit the public data and select what you want and it will configure it. And I'm going to do some of that in 14%.

So as you pull in the data for public data, that's pretty much how you bring it. You bring it in, you post it. For private data, there's a couple different restrictions that you have to have. You have to have the permission to that folder, to that group, and to that project within ArcGIS Online. So depending on how it's set up, you may or may not have access to that data. And so you have to set up that data up there. And then it has to be posted up to the projects that you have access to.

AUDIENCE: Can I ask something to that?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yes.

AUDIENCE: For ArcGIS Online, there's two different compliants. ArcGIS Online from the Enterprise side of ESRI, you say you still have to log in. I don't have to publish that publicly. But within my organization, my users have to log into ArcGIS Online. However, if I have it published on [INAUDIBLE] it acts similar to ArcGIS Online, only I can publish to everyone in the portal, which is inside our firewall. And it's only available to our corporation.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Exactly. And that's the big difference between a portal and the ArcGIS Online standard without the portal. The portal is inside your firewall. You have control of the data. You have access to everything, but you can then also hit it through ArcGIS Online.

AUDIENCE: But you still have full control [INAUDIBLE].

DAVID LAWRENCE: And that's key for a lot of our customers at a large level. So this is what ArcGIS Online looks like. So once you log on to ArcGIS Online, you've got basic content here. And I've got it broken down. You can do groups, you can do subsets, and you can get all the data. So if you want to go to-- this is just a simple map online. And you can go to View, Open in a Map Viewer.

You can view it online, and you can set up standard mapping properties, nothing extravagant on this map. But you could. You could have up to as many layers as you want loaded. It symbolizes the same way it is in your Arc desktop. So when you push it up, it carries the symbols. When you pull it down, it carries the symbols. So your symbology is going to carry between the two applications. Let me go back.

So once you get into here and you get in your content again-- and if you go to the Living Atlas, which is the public data-- wow, this connection is slow. Sorry, I am going to mention that, because I'm really spoiled at home and have a gigabit fiber connection. So every time it's not blazingly fast, I'm shocked. All right, come on.

AUDIENCE: You can have a combination of private an public data [INAUDIBLE].

DAVID LAWRENCE: And once you go into here, you can actually-- when you're in here, you can select this to be a favorite. So it's going to be easily found, so you can do world traffic data. You can do different things. They are working on terrain. I don't believe that's out yet. If you want to know exactly what's coming up in the upcoming releases, there is Rolling Sandbox. Anybody Rolling Sandbox? Anybody in the InfraWorks Rolling Sandbox? No, one? Yes. I had a prize, I'd give it to you.

Actually, I might have a prize. OK, I'll let you know. Hold on. So with the Rolling Sandbox, you can sign up and sign up with an NDA so that you can have access to the upcoming data and the upcoming builds, and you'll see what's coming up pretty quick. So we can look at the data through here. We've got the administrative buildings. We've got different things. And once-- I apologize, I really do. It's been a bad week for hardware.

Once this loads, I will pull some data. I really apologize. So once we get into this, the basics of the workflow are you get the data online into ArcGIS Online, you open your model. And right now, you can't pull the model, the ArcGIS Online data through Model Builder. You have to do it post. So you set up your model, you set up Model Builder, you pull the data in, and then you go and you do connections to ArcGIS Online.

Now, when I put in Model Builder, I want to actually ask on this one. So in my description of the class, how many of you new Model Builder was the model builder in ESRI that I'm talking about? Or were you thinking InfraWorks? OK, am I disappointing you by saying this is the ESRI Model Builder? OK. How many have used Model Builder?

AUDIENCE: The GIS one?

DAVID LAWRENCE: The GIS one. If you haven't and you use ArcGIS, do. It is very powerful. I'm going to get into some of that. So I'm sorry I'm bouncing around so much, because this is taking a while. And I did give fair warning. So with Model Builder, what you can do-- and I'm going to get this data downloaded here. I'm going to pull the same data. I'm going to go to Arizona. I'm losing 2, 3. So I do a search for Arizona data. I can pull up all this information as quickly as the internet will let me.

There we go. So I have public health, public lands, emergency services. There's lots of data that we can pull in, imagery. And ownership is the one that I use a lot for this area. So you can see environmental-- who's the environmental person? So you probably-- you work in the southwest or--

AUDIENCE: Northwest.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Northwest, OK. So what's the big species up there that you've got to worry about?

AUDIENCE: Salmon.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Salmon, OK. So we always have the salmon habitat that you've got to worry about. Arizona, it's the desert tortoise is a huge one. And you can't-- you really can't build in those areas without a lot of remediation and a lot of work. So one of the things that I'll do on a project-- the first thing I'll do is drop in tortoise habitat, and then I'll drop in the FEMA flood plains, then I drop in any cultural data that I can, then I'll drop in and change the terrain data to be slope aspect. Now, I a pretty good idea of where I can and can't build really quickly. And if we want to do an overlay analysis of that, we can do that in Arc very, very quickly, too.

So let's see if InfraWorks is loading. OK, so this is my model that no one would ever build. And I have crazy super elevated bridges that I've been playing with. But to add the data, you just go into the data sources like always, and we go into Arc and ESRI resources. It's going to ask you to log in. If you have an Enterprise log in, you select it down on the bottom. I'm going to log in with mine. Wait a minute, that's not my password.

So once you log in, if you know your log in-- hold on a second. Let me switch to a blank screen really quick, so I don't show you my log in. I think it's this one. There we go. All right, just a second. Let me get logged in. Questions while I'm doing this please?

AUDIENCE: What's your password?

DAVID LAWRENCE: No, come on. I am not at liberty to say that. But they do usually follow a theme.

AUDIENCE: Oh.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Come on, anybody?

AUDIENCE: How much can you edit it down, [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: Well, so actually, editing the original content-- you can't. Editing, what it looks like and what it is-- in InfraWorks, you can do that pretty easily. Sorry, I'm going through my 16 factor authentication here.

And so once it comes in, so you can edit that. If it comes in as a road, you can edit that so that it in InfraWorks it shows up as a road with certain styles with certain widths. You can add all the different attributes like you would in InfraWorks very quickly and easily. Sometimes, security gets frustrating. Did I answer your question, Dave?

AUDIENCE: Yep.

DAVID LAWRENCE: OK, other questions that you want me to cover before I finish this class, because I want to make sure I get to things? I'm going to get into Arc and Model Builder. As soon as I get in here, there we go. OK, anybody shout out what's one thing you want to learn before you leave this class. Come on. Help me out here. And if you--

AUDIENCE: Are you in it or just creating [INAUDIBLE]?

DAVID LAWRENCE: I've got to get my password here really quick. Yeah, it's giving me crazy levels of authentication I've got to go through. Come on, guys. All right, so Model Builder. Model Builder gives me the ability to batch process multiple things. One of the things that I often do is closed polygons. Simply, I use that all the time, because a lot of the data coming from CAD ends up not coming in as closed polygon data.

And I can automatically-- there we go. Tell me when I'm on. Which color plot did he put me on? Has that got me up there yet? Sorry, technical difficulties here. That's what it needs to be. Somebody-- can somebody go grab a tech guy for me? Dave, I'd appreciate it. So I'm going to get great ratings on this class, I know. So once you get in ArcOnline-- and I'll show it to you as soon as I can get the screen up. I apologize. Well, which input is it? There we go. Thank you, sir. I won't mess with it anymore.

All right, so once you get in there, you log in into your ArcOnline. You end up getting this window where you can search your content. So my content is completely empty. I'm going to go to public content. And it shows me all the content that is possible to be shown within this area. So you look at this, and that's not necessarily the best information because all the world data shows up. So sometimes you want to filter it and get down to closer data. And it does give you just about every piece of information you possibly could want. So I'm going to do ownership.

Ownership-- so then I can get down into lend lease areas. I can get into census areas. And then this is fires with land and ownership. So when we get this, we can look at all the different data that's within that geo database that's online. And I obviously don't-- I'm not going to care about that the state boundaries. So I'm not going to check it. Counties, I'm not going across the county within this area. But I will get land ownership and select that. I'm going to change that to a coverage area, and configure that. And a highway, I'm going to configure that to a road. And then I'm going to add that to my map.

I'm going to look at it and see when it was created, get the information on it, and then go back. And I can go through and I can add more information if I want. I don't have to just push it all right then. And then I can add it to my design project, and it goes out and it grabs the data. Most of this area is private land, but it should get some data. I picked a pretty small area.

AUDIENCE: Can you add in these data layers to InfraWorks?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Mm-hmm.

AUDIENCE: From ArcGIS Online?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yep, directly from ArcOnline. And they're working to build a similar connection for Civil and other tools. But I can't tell you when that's going to happen.

AUDIENCE: And you're utilizing this. Are there any for presentation type purposes? Because you can't push it back or [INAUDIBLE].

DAVID LAWRENCE: You can't. But you can also-- once you pull it in as coverage areas, you can take those coverage areas and export as an IMX file into Civil, and that line is cut within the terrain as the edge of the coverage. And it'll also give you a polygon boundary. So if you want to use that data, you can pull that into Civil as you're doing design to do your limits, controls, different things like that. But yeah, it's mostly presentation, mostly to be able to show it. It doesn't have an analytical side within here.

AUDIENCE: Is there a way to get it to update your GIS data, get information back to your GIS data?

DAVID LAWRENCE: At this point, no. So it doesn't push back, but you can go in and you can configure the attributes that come in. And you can see it pulls in your spatial filter, so it's clipping the data for you. If you need to change that spatial filter, you can do that and just type in the spatial locations. And then here's the table of all the attributes.

AUDIENCE: So what are you using Model Builder for then?

DAVID LAWRENCE: So Model Builder-- model builder is kind of fun. So let me grab that same dataset and go into-- let's get out of that. So if we take this, I'm going to add this to an Arc Map. A lot of times, what I'll do with Model Builder is I'll do queries, overlay analysis, buffers, things like that. So if I want to get all the ownership within a specific area of my project-- so usually, what I'll do is I start with a point. And my project is at this point. So then I start doing buffers on that.

So I typically-- within my own Enterprise system I have DEMs already. I already have survey data. I already have LiDAR data. I already have a lot of this data that's actually better than what's on the public side. So often, I'll start with a point. And then in Model Builder, I'll take that point-- let me create here.

And so to do Model Builder, if you haven't used it, which I don't think a lot of people did-- so this is the Model Builder interface. It's really basic. But what you can do is you pop this little search window open and go to Tools. And so the first thing I'll typically do is I'll start with a point, and then I'll buffer. So I'll take my buffer tool, and I'll just drag it in.

And so now, I'm running a buffer analysis. I don't have the data plugged into it yet, but I could. So whatever I want to buffer, I pull into here. It could be a CAD file. It could be a point. It could be a survey point. It could be a point that I went and collected with my Arc Collector. So it can be anything that then I'm buffering to get the area.

So typically, my projects are limited within a five mile radius, 10 mile radius of something, or 20 mile depending on how big your area is. So you buffer that just use as a clip. So I can go in, configure that buffer. I can tell it what I want to output it as and the distance I want to buffer. I also can tell it if I want it round or square or whatever.

So a lot of times, I'll start with that. So that gives me a base and an area to start with. Then I start doing clips. Because a lot of the time, the data I want to pull in-- I don't want to pull in the whole area. I don't want to pull in everything that my network has. I can do the clip analysis tool right here. So I take that and I grab that here. And so I connect that together, and I'll run-- so that's doing basically an automated run sequence of buffer then clip, and then it outputs. So it continues to output. And then you take that output and pull it in.

One of my favorite ones, though-- and I'm going to do this right in line here with you guys.

AUDIENCE: Can I add something to that?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: It's just that [INAUDIBLE] or do some kind of analysis on my VPN. Instead of doing it manually, [INAUDIBLE] and then I just run that once [INAUDIBLE] programming, you can definitely [INAUDIBLE] It's a simplified user interface [INAUDIBLE] you can go get some tools, some of the scripts that you find in the ESRI forums [INAUDIBLE] and then you can customize it. So that's basically what [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: It's actually a light version of FME, [INAUDIBLE] software. This is a light version of it.

AUDIENCE: I'm curious. We utilize FME quite a bit. Have you ever tried to write back to ArcGIS Online with Model Builder?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yes, you can do it, but it requires a little bit of Python on top of it. So there is a little Python script that you could put in. Because what you'll have to do is add in the GIT and post strings and with the passwords. And so you have to decide what you want to do about security on that. If you have complete control of those Python scripts, then you can throw the password right in there and hardcode it. If you don't, then you have to make sure you put in the ability to have the passwords pop in, pop out, and upload it. So yeah, you can do it. You can push it right from Model Builder and that's some of the fun that you get into once you get into Python.

AUDIENCE: Like I said, we're utilizing FME right back to--

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: --ArcGIS.

DAVID LAWRENCE: So what I did on this one is I just added a simple fishnet grid. So with InfraWorks, I don't know if anybody's ever tried to load in super high detail terrain over your whole project. I always do, and then it gets frustrating the next day and the next day and the next day. So what this does is a fishnet grid-- it'll create just basically your project grid. And you could either pull in a project grid from CAD and utilize that, or you could create this.

So I create this. And then what I'll do is I'll start clipping my terrain data that's in my Enterprise system to those cells. And I can adjust the density that I clip with here. And then when I pull it into InfraWorks, I have different levels of density. So when I built the Navajo Nation model, we knew that certain areas were of concern. So we built that out at the five meter grid cells.

But once you start buffering out beyond that, then you have lesser and lesser detail because it doesn't matter. So you can adjust that to get that scenic quality, that scenic look, but also having the detail where you need it because you don't want to kill your systems. Because InfraWorks will push as much as you will give it until your machine comes to a complete crawl. It will let you try and push it. I've done it multiple times. The other one that I do a lot-- go.

AUDIENCE: So you would have to run this entire process. And then the output, is that what you would bring into InfraWorks? Is that how you--

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, so you would either add on a piece onto the end of this to post to ArcGIS Online, or you would save it as an output, and then upload that there and decide which way you want to do it. And that's depending on your infrastructure, your system how you want to do that. I like pushing a backup on, because then I can do the refresh.

So then in InfraWorks, all I have to do is hit the Refresh button. I can run these analysis all day long. And each time it updates, I just hit Refresh. So I can do a full complex system of overlays. So what I'll typically do with the fishnet beyond that is I'll do, in these grid cells, do I have 100 year flood plain? In these grid cells, do I have an endangered species? In these grid cells-- so I start doing a criteria analysis.

And as I go through, then I have an area of compatible areas to build. So I can analyze my slope. I can analyze my terrain. I can analyze by soils. I can analyze by whatever I want and put these just right in line and add my criteria and weighting even. So if I have a weight that this equals 200, so I get to start getting totals of what's my what's my ranking of this area.

AUDIENCE: When you put it in InfraWorks, is there an option you can do for query? Because in the analysis, you can do with InfraWorks what you can do in this process. Well, not really. It's just the end product.

DAVID LAWRENCE: It's mostly it's mostly pull it in, yeah. There is abilities to query it through JavaScript, but I wasn't really going to go into that because that starts-- and in this area, you can do the queries really quick. And whoops, I didn't type the extra L. So once you go through all these different things, one of the things you can do really quickly is actually not labels. I don't want I'll put labels, but I can output to a table.

So all my data-- and let me pull in dataset here, so I can run it. So if I go in here. Am I answering any of your questions? Long faces. OK, go for it.

AUDIENCE: So is InfraWorks was just basically acting like an intermediary between the ArcGIS and bring that into InfraWorks, and then push it into Civil 3D? I mean, are you keeping those attributes when you do export it to Civil 3D?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Some of them. So it depends on the type of object. The extended data will come with a coverage or a line. It'll carry that. Some of the other data, if you have it, pull it in as a land area or a parcel, it doesn't come through as a partial. It comes in as a line. And it will have that--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: It keeps the attributes as there, but it's not-- a parcel is not a parcel, but it will have that extended data. So when you pull it in, it'll carry that.

AUDIENCE: But you're not able to query it in Civil 3D or Map?

DAVID LAWRENCE: If you're going to go into Map, I would either go the other way with the standard tools or wait until they have the piece, the same piece to go into Map, which is in process right now. I've seen some working betas. It's kind of cool. But if you're going to go to Map, I would wait or do it the other way rather than trying to go through InfraWorks and out. Yeah?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: So like a SQL or an Oracle or anything like that? That's a whole different workflow. Within InfraWorks-- and I'll just go or that really quickly here. Within InfraWorks, there's a couple of different connection strings. So there's a file data source--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: Like the Oracle or SQL Spatial?

AUDIENCE: Mm-hmm.

DAVID LAWRENCE: OK, let's talk after all. Or even Access you can pull in, but I guess I need to know what kind of database you're looking at.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: Oh, OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yes. And it works sometimes, just be honest with you. It depends on the versioning of the file geo database.

AUDIENCE: Versioning like pre--

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, so if it's ArcGIS Pro, sometimes you have some issues of the geo database if you don't.

AUDIENCE: But you need like a 10-51 constituent?

DAVID LAWRENCE: So you can do the SDE, the shape. And the geo database is in here somewhere. Connect. So it's in this list. And they're working to make it all FDO-based, so that you can pull in data from everywhere. And so that's where you would pull it in is through this, and I can get with you on that.

The other one is being able to pull the data from just about everywhere, SQL Server. But using Arc Map, you can also prep your data a lot. So I don't personally like to pull in geo databases directly, because the databases can handle so much information that it's far beyond the area of my model most of the time. And I don't want to necessarily have all that data loaded into InfraWorks consistently. I want to parse it down to the area that I want. And so that's where I go into Model Builder and parse it down based on the flow, do a query, and I can do a select.

I need to load some data in here, sorry. If I get some data in here, I can show you really quick. So what kind of data are you talking about from the states or from the government?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, and I don't want to do that. I do that a lot with aerial imagery, because you've got to tie it together, and clip it, and make sure that it fits into the other data set. Because your high res imagery is only going to be a certain area. And you have to make sure that you match that into the other area. A lot of times we with drone data-- Did I spell that wrong again? It's been a long week already. So I'll just add that.

So with drone data, a lot of times the drone data, the imagery it creates is not square in any way, shape, or form. They'll do standard areas, but then you get all the null areas. And I don't know if you've ever taken the no data area and tried to change the alpha so that it shows through. It's great when you're just looking at it. But when you start doing rendered flyovers, it starts doing flickering, and it kind of does weird things. So a lot of times, it's better to clip that image down to just the area of the detailed, and then you can bring in a Bing image underneath, and then collapse those two on top of each other.

So you do a clip to the area of the detailed image, and then the area that's just the seam. You can do the null data, change that to alpha, overlay it against the other Bing imagery if you have the license, and then clip that to the standard pegged squares that you can connect to. Does that make any sense?

AUDIENCE: I've done a little bit of that in Raster.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, Raster design, that's a good one. So let me close this. So this is just a simple line dataset. And so often, what we'll do is we'll first buffer it. And I need to-- when's this cl-- I have a lot of time, don't I? OK. So I'm going to buffer. I'm losing another one. I know. Thank you for lasting this long. Questions so I make sure I hit what you want?

AUDIENCE: Could you do the labels that you had before?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Labels?

AUDIENCE: I thought you had labels.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Ah, that was with the fishnet tool, but you can. Yes, you can create-- so long-term, there's some cool stuff coming. But right now, what you can do is you can actually export the labels as points, and then take those points and create a point of interest and callouts for that particular point. You can also use it as tool tips and pull in all the attributes from the object as tool tips, and then create that as a custom web page to then display. I'll be emailing you guys a whole bunch of actual good content, once I get it all done again for the third time.

So this is what it looks like when it runs. And it didn't like it because it didn't like me. So when you do a simple buffer-- oh, I lost four more.

AUDIENCE: I think you can just do buffers any time.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, you're right. So I don't have a set. I'm going to do like a 10 foot buffer around that. I lost another one. All right, so we just did a simple buffer. And we have that in here. And we can use that to then start clipping your data. It didn't let it back in for me, though. So with the buffer-- let me do a bigger buffer. 50, all right. Don't want to overwrite it.

AUDIENCE: So I'm curious. Why not just create a web map in ArcGIS Online with the data layers that you want, the information that you're looking for, and just bring that into InfraWorks at that point? It still did a refresh. You've already created a web map that already has the data you need from any of your public information, right?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Rather than clicking it, you can isolate it for the area that you want. You can read a web map. It would seem that your workflow would be a whole lot cleaner if you just did it from that standpoint.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, you can definitely set it up that way and do a web map, if you're a team that knows how to do web maps to set it up originally. Yes, I would set it up as a web map, pull it in, set up the clipping. It's just a matter of how much data you want to push to ArcGIS Online, because the billing on their system is often based on how much you push up and down.

AUDIENCE: You're talking about credits, right?

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, the credits.

AUDIENCE: But generally, if you have ArcGIS Online within your organization, you're already set for the number of users that get that data. [INAUDIBLE], right? Because if you're already pushing portal into ArcGIS Online, it would just seem to me that they're going to a web map, create the web map that you want. Now, you can get Map Services. You can close Map Services and really streamline your workflow, rather than clipping that data. Because I guess where I'm struggling is, what does that buy you? When you're clipping all this data, you're not able to push it back. You're not able to save it back unless you're rewriting back to ArcGIS Online.

DAVID LAWRENCE: I typically will post it up into ArcGIS Online onto a web map. But the post is-- you've got to have that ArcPy and the Model Builder piece. You can push the whole thing up, but then you end up with online maps that have a huge extent. A lot of times, we like to limit it, but you can clip that in the Map Online anyway. So yeah, I mean that workflow is just as effective and gets you there also.

AUDIENCE: Well, yeah, because the other Builder piece that that brings you is if you're going to start doing that, then you can start thinking about web maps that you could then potentially push out to the organization as well.

DAVID LAWRENCE: Yeah, and then that's where you start getting to using collector and doing the geo processing there to be able to do geolocation geotagging, and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean, talking about web mapping sometimes gets over some of the people's heads. But yeah, web map is definitely the preferred route, but you also have to look at that coming back through of some of this. They'll want it back in CAD, some of the users.

And so by doing this, I'm getting the same exact data as what's in CAD, what's in GIS, and what's in InfraWorks. So I'm creating one dataset that's used in all of them rather than having a Cad file, having a GIS file, having an InfraWorks file. So I create one, and then that gets me less data storage on the network, less data storage I've got to push up and down, and a unified, continual data source that is updated constantly.

AUDIENCE: So you went through the process of bringing your data into InfraWorks, and you model it, you analyzed it. So what are the things that you can analyze with InfraWorks?

DAVID LAWRENCE: A lot of it, though, is-- so a lot of what I've been using it for is to symbolize a lot of things that you have already in Arc, OK? So that's a lot of databases, gives you existing conditions. The other thing is you get the-- you analyze it within Arc to do overlay analysis to get you build criterias and areas. So then when you build within InfraWorks and you set up your alignments and all that, you have that build criteria in there. So often, I'll do like a heat map and overlay that into the terrain model. So as I'm drawing my alignments, I know where the most suitable criteria is.

AUDIENCE: So what are the things that InfraWorks can do that GIS can't?

DAVID LAWRENCE: As far as processing?

AUDIENCE: Well, jsut on the presentation of your data, I guess. What tools can you use after you have everything in InfraWorks. Is there anything else?

DAVID LAWRENCE: I mean, there's tons that you can do once you get it in. I mean, as far as selecting bridge alignments, often we'll do a lot of this with bridge alignments. You'll do your habitat, your flow ratio within the stream, your bank slope analysis, the soil structures analysis into the area, so where to build it, where to put it, where you can't put it, what the cost analysis, city analysis, if it's going to be in federal or state land, what that's going to do as far as the permitting process.

So you add all these things on top to get your most suitable areas to build. And then once you're on top of that, that's when you start to utilize the InfraWorks design capabilities to draw your bridge and your roadways and different things.

AUDIENCE: In InfraWorks, you can go back to that and get a script tool.