InfraWorks 360 Is the First Step, What’s the Next Step—VDC Modeling Using AutoCAD Civil 3D

PRESENTER: All right. The key learning objectives for this class. Describe the essential concepts of BIM enabled infrastructure. See advantages of virtual design and construction and other BIM tasks. Know how traditional data sources are converted to BIM model components. Learn how dynamic objects enable the MacLeamey principles. And use InfraWorks 360 as a helper application in your BIM models.

All right, now this is the workflow. I'm not going to go through each one of these, but these are the workflows you're going to see today. Eight of them. And I'm going to be using civil 3D 2016 and InfraWorks 360.

About BIM. We all know that BIM is building information modeling, and it's building in the verb sense, in the creation sense, not in the architectural sense. The key characteristics that I'm going to continue to come back and tell you about as they relate to the workflows that we're going to see, are these four characteristics. It has to be a 3D model, that model has to be dynamic and interact with other systems in that model, it has to be intelligent, it has to have attribution that makes logical sense, and for infrastructure it must be geo-located. We have to know where it lives on Earth.

The possibilities of BIM. BIM is 3D models that can be created from traditional paper documents, or 2D CAD files. Visualization of complex geometry, which is difficult to understand in the 2D world. Combining of 3D pieces to make individual systems, then composing multiple systems into one dynamic model. And finally, showing these systems in real context.

Conceptual simulizations are an important task, whether it be for directing airport traffic during construction, mocking up of a multi-story building, or showing proposed traffic flow in a new interchange design. Many types of simulation and engineering analysis are realized from good BIM models. Such as shown in this complex simulation which shows and includes environmental aspects.

3D modeling often exposes elements that are obscured, such as underground utilities and structural foundations. Clash detection is a BIM task that leverages these elements, and reduces construction mistakes before they are discovered on the job site.

Design proposals are presented individually and in real world context, so that all stakeholders are equally informed.

Visualization is a great side benefit of a good BIM model, and impressive animations show and tell the whole project's story. This fascinating virtual construction shows how new bridge piers are built, and then how the prefabbed column is tilted into place, and the same construction equipment cranes lift and put the bridge deck on top.

This next video is the ultimate in serious simulation. Watch how the Alaska viaduct in the city of Seattle is compromised in an earthquake, in a major earthquake. We have the lower road deck. As it crumbles and is inundated by the Seattle bay waters, we see the old concrete bridge deck collapse. As the shaking continues it's further compromised, and the concrete structure, the multilevel structure, collapses. Now we also have the structural collapses of the buildings, and then the utilities are compromised with electrical shorts and fires from gas lines.

A key principle in BIM for infrastructure is the real world concept and positioning. And of course we use point clouds to aid in our modeling. The concept of a BIM dashboard is extremely important to monitor these events. And in this case we have the number of airplanes impacted during construction phases. A simple dashboard.

Here's a more interesting dashboard about phases of demolition, temporary construction, new construction, during a planning phase.

This is the ultimate. This is a 5D dashboard. This one has the graphics on the top that is showing me the phases of my construction. I'm going to pause on this for just a minute, because this kind of gives us a whole picture of BIM and how we can use it to justify the ROI and the advantages of the basic concepts of a good BIM project.

Here I have the timeline. These are the tasks. The tasks are simplified here as pre and development tasks, approval stage, and green as the construction phase. Now this is the meter. This is the money meter. Now you can understand that during the preliminary design phase, that money meter is going to run. Then it's going to do what during the approval phase? Is it going to go up or down, as far as speed? What do you think? During the approval phase, how much money am I spending? It's going to go down, correct? Unless we get the lawyers involved.

All right, then think about the money meter when we get to the green phase. What's going to happen to the money meter? Wham.

OK. Now one good sign of a well enabled BIM project, is the fact that the tasks happen in parallel. We don't do one then the other, then the other, then the other. We want to keep the timeline short, because if it's shorter in time, what happens to the money? Hopefully it's less, too. So this is an incredibly interesting graph that shows, and as we saw it run, you could see the meter go faster and slower. And then we could also see that some of the tasks early on are finished, so the money meter is going to slow down. And then the most critical tasks-- this is the actual interchange with fly over design-- is the one that happens last.

So this is a BIM dashboard. This is a 5D BIM dashboard, because I have time. I have the timeline aspect, and then the fifth dimension is the cost aspect. So this is a good picture of a dashboard for BIM for infrastructure.

All right, let's get started. We're going to build a project base map using model builder. Model builder is in InfraWorks 360. Now as I show you these workflows, what I'd like to point out. Remember, I said there were four characteristics of a good BIM for infrastructure. And I'm going to highlight the things that are important about the workflow. In this case, it's going to be Geo-located, and it's going to be intelligent.

So this is the InfraWorks panel. Starting panel. I go to the Model Builder tab, and in the Model Builder, I want to locate my project. And our project scenario today is in Shrewsbury, the United Kingdom. In Shropshire. And it is in this area, here.

So I locate this area. I make sure that my selection is less than 200 square kilometers. And then I make sure that I look at the data sources. I need to know if my data is good, if I trust it. Oh, it's on the internet, so it must be right. Correct? And so it's very important that you just review and understand where this model builder data comes from. Different geographic areas in the world have different precisions. Especially when it comes to the terrain.

OK, now I've had it sent to the Cloud for processing. Lately, it's happening very, very quickly. Within 15 minutes, I get an email that my model is ready. So just a quick review. Make sure that you have a limit of your project that is less than 200 square kilometers. And then also, very important to understand this data comes from Open Street Map. Open Street Map. That means you can go in and put in anything you want, OK? And it would show up in your model. And of course, the satellite imagery comes from Microsoft Bing server. And then the most serious part is the terrain data. You have to really know if it's 30 meter postings, 90 meter postings. In some areas, it's even better than that.

So let's take a look at the model builder results.

Now, here's an interesting concept. In my InfraWorks application, I have signed up and I've subscribed to some of the extra add on features. And model builder comes with regular, I don't need to do anything. Oh, look at this. Open. Open, open. I want to point out to you that once I have the model builder results, I've stored them on my local computer, and I'm not connected to the Cloud. You do not need to be connected to the Cloud to run InfraWorks You can keep it local.

All right, so here is the model that has returned. I'm running it off a SQLite file. It's going to be a big file, it's going to be pretty massive. But let's see what we have here. That's the size of my project.

This is interesting. So in a matter of a few minutes, look at the rich fabric I have. I have aerial imagery, I have a digital terrain model, I have the names of 3D buildings, I have the names of the roads. Now, let's zoom into the area of our scenario. Our project scenario today. We're going to look at a very simplistic development of this land around the sewerage treatment plant, and the hook in the river Severn.

So I am going to export my area of interest using an IMX file. An IMX file is going to bring me all of that valuable information that I need to put into civil 3D. I'm going to use a bounding box. I select the region, because I don't want to take in all of these road center lines. I just want what's in the area of interest.

Make sure you know where you put it on your computer, and we're exporting it to an IMX.

All right. Who's done model builder here? OK, more than half the people have done model builder. It's fantastic, please try it.

Now, about InfraWorks 360. What it can do. InfraWorks 360 is an amazing tool. And one of the huge advantages of InfraWorks is that it gives you this real world context instantly. Now it works in latitude and longitude, but it can also, when we bring this information out, it turns it into a geographic projected coordinate system. And if you don't know what coordinate system you're on, it will give you a pretty good idea of which one you should choose. OK?

Now I love it because of the huge data aspect. In our world today in infrastructure, we're starting to deal with longer alignments, and we're dealing with larger project areas. And we know that the limitations with an AutoCAD based application, such as Civil 3D, that engine just isn't oomphy enough. Excuse me. So InfraWorks is amazing at the ability to do huge data sets. It combines disparate data sets in data types into one model.

You'll see. We're going to use drawing data, we're going to use GIS data, we're going to do a lot of stuff and put it into one model. The visual representation without any training. I'm going to get not Hollywood realistic, but I'm going to get something good enough that any stakeholder can see what's happening.

I'm going to be able to do multiple proposals. This is again, very, very nice. I literally name proposals, and I can arrange my data to appear in different proposals and with different configurations. Again, long alignments in huge areas. The Cloud based utilities. These are awesome extra optimization features that you can sign up to use. Some of them are free, some of them you must be on subscription.

And collaboration. Everybody in this room can look at the same model. If you download the InfraWorks 360 as a trial, and use it for 30 days, and have a blast for 30 days, what happens to it after 30 days? You can tell us.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, it reverts to a viewer.

PRESENTER: It reverts to a viewer so that you have a free viewing tool so that now you can collaborate with anyone. You just can't edit, but it's a very powerful viewer. So this is what I love about InfraWorks. Now, what InfraWorks, you have to do-- understand the expectations of what you can do with it. It-- limited detail engineering, but it's getting better.

But am I going to lay out and get settings out and stake out for carbon gutter? Am I? I know.

You're not. You're going to get close, but you're not going to be able to do this. But I love it because it gets you pretty close to-- it gets you a good idea. So know the quality of your data.

The data output formats-- you have to understand which kind of data you're going to leverage. We were just talking about your BIM model and I was curious if you were doing it as FBX or if you were doing it as KML files or if you were doing it as DWG 3D models. So the data formats-- you have to understand what it can export and for what intent and purpose.

OK, the version considerations and upgrade process-- I'm just going to put an exclamation point on that and not go into it, OK? The base map in Civil 3D-- so we've got a quick start from model builder. Again, the four things-- intelligent and geolocated.

So I'm going to bring that IMX into Civil 3D. The first thing that I need to do in Civil 3D is make sure that I am, what? Georeferenced. So we go into the Settings.

And in the Settings, we set our coordinate system. I'm going to use British national grid on this and I'm going to use meters. Who here is doing meters? OK, who here is doing decimal feet? Who's doing chains?

Utah, right? Utah. All right, so here, I've connected to the IMX file. It's telling me the coordinate system. I'm opting to bring in all of those IMX objects. I can opt to filter them and maybe only bring in the road center lines if I wish.

That's the results. That's the instant base map from InfraWorks. Looks pretty good-- I have my river edge. I have my road network and I also have these existing grounds. What do you think of that surface?

No-- all right, so now with the-- look at all the alignments that have come in. And some of the alignments even have names. So I am going to clean up this base map.

And I'm fast forwarding because you don't need to see me do the trim command and all of this. So this is the information that I need for my project. Now I am connecting to the Geolocation tool in Civil 3D.

If I have an Autodesk account, which is free, I can use the Bing aerial imagery. I don't have to find a file and look for it and attach it to my drawing. I'm just using the BIM aerial imagery. I can go anywhere and I just have clipped out that image to use in my project. So what have I done here?

I've saved myself a lot of time and I've also clipped and cropped that image, which you know if you have an image and you need to crop it, sometimes it's not so easy unless you know the tricks in Map 3D. But so cleaving up, its geolocated. I can take advantage of the imagery. Review-- instant imagery, free with your Autodesk account.

When you launch Civil 3D, it asks you if you want to use the imagery. Some areas of the world, the imagery is awesome. Other areas, it's not so awesome. Oh, right, in the handouts, I have listed a chart of how things from InfraWorks convert into Civil 3D objects.

Now, I'm going to point out a couple of important ones that-- I'm not going to go down the whole list here, but I'm going to review the important conversions and why you need to know these important conversions. First of all, a planning road versus a design road-- a planning road is sketch, sketch, sketch, you know, click, click, click. Or, it's how the fabric comes in from your model builder.

This is so awesome. You can leverage this tool. Because when you take a planning road, which looks like this, and if you click the button and turn it into a design road. it does the best fit curve function for you. So that just saved me-- if I have a long alignment and it's doing this, this, and this, I don't have to do one phase, the second phase, the third phase.

This is an easy button. This is an awesome thing. And it will turn this into that.

That looks like an engineering road. An engineering road is what? Straight tangents and curves. And when you convert this, make sure you just convert it to curves.

And who uses spirals? Bad, bad. No, no.

In my engineering practice, I know that-- just a fun side note, when the architects would give me a parking lot to stake out and they had spirals and beautiful medians and all that, well, the price just doubled on the stakeout. Now, another key point about when we bring in features from the model builder in InfraWorks-- these features must-- they must be weeded if we're going to use them to develop a BIM modeling object.

In this case, this is the pond that we're going to design. And you can see that it has 435 vertices. What would happen if I tried to grade that out?

I'm going to make such a heavy model that it's not going to be efficient for me. If I weed it out, it's going to cord things out and chop it up a little bit. But when I'm in the machine grater, my machine grater is going to smooth it out. It's not going to go clunk, clunk, clunk.

So just think about the heaviness of your model. And remember, weeding is your best friend. Key point on the bridges-- when I bring in from InfraWorks bridges, bridges-- it's an awesome addition in InfraWorks that it does model some bridges for us and we have the ability to move the peers in the abutments and all sorts of great things. When those things come into Civil 3D, they are 3D solids.

They are not intelligent bridge objects. I'll show you, though, how we're going to turn them into intelligent bridge objects. OK, surface refinement-- adding better data.

So I'm going to show you. In this demonstration, we're going to look at the concepts of 3D and geolocation. So this is our project.

This is the project that we're going to develop in phase one. We're going to put in a pond and do some road rehabilitation. Phase two happens later.

Now, what I want to do here, and we can see I have the layout of my GIS information, which we'll see how I get this later, I am going to connect to a wealth of DEM files-- Digital Elevation Models. In this case, these are ASC files. These files are huge.

Now, you can see how many that I'm going to combine into one layer. This is magic. I'm going to take a tile of 16 of these and put them in one.

Why do I want to put them in one? There's no seams. It's a seamless combination.

All right, that's what I get. That looks really good. OK, this data, I've researched this data.

And this data is half meter accuracy. That's going to be really good for me to do preliminary design and even some final design. All right, so here's the phase one I showed you. This is phase two.

Look at the quarry. Look at the details that I got for that quarry. All right, so I've connected to data.

I've got it into my Civil 3D project. But now I need to start on the quest to turn it into a Civil 3D surface. So once it's in here, I'm going to do what's called Creating a Contour layer. Now, some of you know how to do this.

And if you do, look at the trick I'm going to do here. I'm going to make major contours at every four. So I have two meter intervals for my majors. That's what I get, OK?

This is a contour layer in the GIS sense. Now, I'm going to come in here and I'm going to make a temporary drawing with the right coordinate system and I'm going to use the Map Import tool. I could also, what? Drag and drop it in if I wanted to.

But when I use the Map Import tool, I'm going to assign data to this. So these are GIS contours and I'm going to create what's called object data and I want to make sure that I have elevation and the fact if it's a minor or major contour. All right, so as easy as that. These videos will be available for you in case you're not familiar with this process and want to try it.

Now, once I bring this map information in, look at this. The elevation is zero. Is that going to help me?

But the object data is the right number. OK, so it's intelligent to know that the object data is telling it what the elevation of the polyline is. Anyone know how I'm going to get it done? How am I going to-- Map 3D, and what is the--

AUDIENCE: Map query.

PRESENTER: Map query, thank you very much. OK, who here has done map query to alter properties? OK, I would say a third of you have done this. OK, so we use the map W space command to get into the map 3D in Civil 3D.

You know that Civil 3D is built on a full functioning copy of AutoCAD and then a full functioning copy of Map 3D and then Civil 3D runs on top of both of those applications. So I can use my Civil 3D to do machine design and do the view base command to get all my orthographic projections instantly. So I can use it in machine design as well as infrastructure design.

So I can use the mapping tools. I can import huge DEM files. I can combine them into one raster item and then-- oh, another thing, I use draw order. This is not the CAD draw order. This is the GIS draw order and you can organize this to get your objects above and below each other.

All right, so this is using map query. Sorry about those of you that already know how to do this, but to me, this is fascinating. So I am going to turn off on my display manager my GIS information.

I'm going to go to this tab-- the Map Explorer tab. And on the Map Explorer tab, I'm going to attach that temporary drawing that had poly lines that didn't have any elevation. Now there's a concept, of a drive alias.

This is, like, I love it. It's the old fashioned part of Map that still exists. Just look in the Help file on how to do a drive alias.

All right, so now I've queried it in and I've done a quick view to make sure that it's shown up. And now I'm querying in by location and I'm only querying in the, what? The major contours, OK?

So I'm querying everything in, but only the major contours, and I'm making sure that I alter the properties so that the elevation is assigned that object data number. So now, if I look at that poly line, boy, it looks like it needs weeding, right? Look at the elevation.

The object data says 68 and the actual elevation of the polyline says 68. So now I can use it for, what? I'm going to build my surface.

OK, now, the surface that I'm going to build-- well, first, just a quick review of the wonderful ability to attach this temporary drawing and to be able to query it in and alter the properties. OK, I queried in certain things. I only queried in major contours and then I said, you assign the object data to the elevation of each one of those contours. So property expressions are the way to do this and it's very straightforward. It helps you in our knowledge base.

You can also watch these videos. Now, for the two meter surface, I have made a container for the two meter surface. And now I'm going to define it. Now this is old school for all of you. I'm going to define it using contours.

And I make sure that my layer is isolated. And I make sure that I do what? Weeding, make sure that you weed these. Otherwise, you're going to get a heavy, heavy, heavy object.

And I do really serious weeding. I weeded out to like 8 degrees and sometimes to even, like, 10 meters in the length. All right, so now I turn the Layers back on. I do a Select-- notice that I'm doing a lot of selecting of my Civil 3D objects in the Prospector pane, not on the screen.

Who else does it that way? It's a great way to do it because you know exactly what you're selecting. On the screen sometimes you select other things. Look at this awesome surrounds surface.

OK, so now it is a surface object. I can use it in my BIM model. The last thing I'm going to do is export it as an XML.

Why am I going to do it as an XML because this is an existing surface? It's not going to change. It's going to be a very good data source, very easy for me to bring into my other drawings as I progress, OK?

So this is the 2-meter surrounds surface. This is my entire project area. Now who knows what an MMS file is? What does MMS stand for? Memory, Map Surface.

Are they good to have these files or bad to have these files? You should avoid these at all costs. A Memory Map Surface file means that it's too big to hold the whole surface in your current drawing. And it pages out and stores it externally.

OK, you come back a week later. You check it out of Vault or check it out of ProjectWise or get it off your server, and it can't find the Memory Map Surface, big, big trouble. Or you check it out of Vault, and your Vault looks for 3 hours for it.

So avoid at all costs creating Memory Map Surface files. To do this, you just make sure that your surface is no larger than 2 million points. If I have a 40-million-point surface, I just cut that down into multiple surfaces and have multiple XML files or data shortcuts. So please, please make sure that you do not go over 2 million. In my work, I can't tell you how many people have ruined big, big infrastructure projects because they don't follow that easy, easy tip.

I would say that-- and they blame it on Vault. They blame it on ProjectWise. They blame it on their users. They blame it on their own hardware.

It's nothing more than an MMS file. So make sure that you look at the number of points. Now that beautiful 2-meter surface that we have that shows all of the details I need is only 94,000 points, well within the limits. But yet it gave us enough information.

All right, here's another tip on bringing in surfaces from XML files. Make sure, make sure when you import an XML file to be used in your project that you turn off-- expand this. Make sure you do it by default. This is toggled on.

Now if you keep that on, not only is it going to bring you the surface, what else is it going to bring? It's going to bring all of those contours. If you weeded them, great. If you didn't, you're going to have a lot of extra CAD in your model, and we don't need it. They don't serve any purpose on an XML file that is a file that is an existing-condition file.

The surround surface, now why am I working with a 2-meter surround surface and not a detailed surface? Well, the reason that I didn't make our entire project a half-meter surface is what? Size, and the fact that if I'm outside my area of interest, probably the only two things I'm going to use are visualization-- have the aerial imagery draped on these-- and hydrology.

And when I do my watersheds, and when I, you know, figure out my pre-development cue values, and I do my time of concentration, I can do it perfectly with a 2-meter refined surface, but not a precise detailed surface. Does that make sense to everyone that the surrounds do not have to be my half-meter accuracy? That we can perfectly do our hydrology on a surrounds-type surface, and we can also do our visualization with a surrounds-type surface.

OK, getting back into surface simplification. Now this is the TIN lines of those ASC files. Remember all the 16 that I dumped in from the GIS, the mapping?

So look at how many points. At every one of those intersections would be a point. Now when I converted it to contour lines, look at how many points I have now, just where the black big TIN lines go. So you can see that I have taken out each one of those tiles that made the green digital terrain map was a million points each.

So that means if I brought in 16 tiles, I had 16 million points in that surface. And you saw, by the technique I used, I brought it down to less than a 100,000 points. And I haven't lost any fidelity because for the intent and purpose, it's perfect. OK, make sense?

The surface management with the XML file, so here I have my two phases of detail, phase 1 and phase 2. And I'm going to bring in for the surrounds surface. And there is the expansion and the clicking off, the toggling off, of the source data. How many knew about that trick?

All right, so there's my surrounds surface. That's going to be for visualization. That's going to be for hydrology.

Now this is the half-meter surface. I made the half-meter surface with the same technique of querying in from Map. And the half-meter surface is where I'm going to do my detailed design. All right, and so there's the results.

So know your areas. Know the intent. Know where it's going to be.

Now here is a quick profile showing the difference between the 2-meter and the half-meter surface. And you can actually measure the difference on those profile views. And you can ask yourself if this is going to be adequate or not. But make sure you use these nice surface analysis tools, these visual tools, to make sure that you understand the project.

All right, let's take a look at the 2 meter again. We can see now-- oh, it's 270. OK, so a little bit bigger on this one, so it's still way less than 2 million points.

And these are the surfaces in my Surface collection. And if I want to do data management, now I save this drawing, and I create the data shortcuts from this drawing. And this now becomes what? A source drawing for my surfaces data shortcuts.

I just wanted to show you the possibilities. OK, in the example I'm going to do today, I'm going to use just XML files. I'm not going to do data shortcuts.

All right, adding traditional data, so far, we've build a Civil 3D surface object. Does that qualify for BIM? Yes, no, or maybe? Is it 3D?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

PRESENTER: Is it georeferenced?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

PRESENTER: Does it have attributes? If I take my mouse and scroll over it, do I get the elevation?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

PRESENTER: Do I get the name of it? Is it on a layer? It's attributed, OK? And then what was the fourth concept to BIM to make it BIM-y. It has to be dynamic.

What would happen if I put an extra point in there or if I did bring the contours in and change the contours? What would happen to the surface?

AUDIENCE: Change.

PRESENTER: It would change. So is it a BIM object? Yes, it actually checks up all four of those boxes.

But let's look at things that aren't BIM-y. All right, the key characteristic, we're going to add survey points. And we hope to heck they're geolocated, all right?

But they're not 3D. I mean, they do have some intelligence though. But let's look how this works.

Here is our base map. There is our lovely surface. We're going to turn it off. It's still there, but we just don't need it. The intent and purpose is not to show it.

I am going to open the Survey Database. And I'm simply going to drag and drop my survey points into the drawing. Now I showed you that currently in the drawing, there's no point groups, but now I have dragged and dropped some control points in. If I go to the Prospector tab, I now have automatically created point groups. Whenever you take in survey data into Civil 3D, it automatically creates the point groups if you drag and drop the point information.

Now the next thing we're going to do is we're going to get the edge of the river because this could impact our project. Now I could spend all afternoon doing what, connect the dots? Or I'm going to make sure that I use the Process Linework command in correlation with the what? The Figure Prefix Database, make sure that we toggle those on.

Oh, that just saved me what? An hour of work and carpal tunnel. OK, so it is a Survey Figure. And the reason that it worked is because in the Figure Prefix Library, the description of the point was called River, RVR.

And notice that it automatically put it on a layer called River Edge. I didn't have to have that layer existing in the drawing. It automatically made a layer.

All right, so now I can remove the survey database stuff from the drawing, and I'm left with what? I'm left with this line. This line work that is attributed because it's on the correct layer. And I'm going to use the Map Export command, and I'm going to turn it into a shape file.

Now the reason-- oh, here's another neat thing. When it is a CAD item, I can take things such as the length of the perimeter and the area of it and turn it into smart information that will live on the BIM object. I'm taking CAD stuff.

And we know if I'm doing the surface area of, say, a landscape yard, that I can easily get it from CAD. I don't have to figure it out or add it in by hand. It automatically happens. And then you saw I dragged and dropped it right into our drawing. OK, if we look at the theme, you can make it any color you want, very, very easy to do.

So the aspect of using these little tricks and tips from GIS is incredibly important. The other fact is I mentioned Layers. Layers is an interesting way to carry BIM attribution from cradle to grave.

It's the only attribute that you don't have to really work with that will carry through from the most primitive AutoCAD all the way through to your most exotic BIM model. It's the layer, so make sure you use logical layer naming. So the power of the survey database, we use the Figure Prefix Library to automatically connect the points.

OK, now the next BIM-y thing we're going to do, if we can look back in the history of development of infrastructure, before the era of CAD-- when did CAD start? When did Autodesk start?

AUDIENCE: '84 maybe?

PRESENTER: Yeah, yeah, '84. And, some of the people of my era, when did you start using CAD?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: 85, 85? Oh, I sold my car in order to buy a copy of AutoCAD version 9. I sold my car. But within like six weeks, I had earned enough money from the architects in my town to buy a brand new Ford F-250 truck.

[LAUGHTER]

All right, so CAD came in from 1985. And you guys probably started using it in the '90s. You know, it's really caught on.

So GIS has also been around for a really long time, so we're in this era now where we have lots and lots of legacy data. How do we make it Bim-y We're going to give it BIM character. I mentioned Layers and object data, so the characteristics of BIM, we're going to turn it into 3D objects. We're going to make intelligent and geolocated.

Here's a paper document. Now, I'm using the Raster Design input, add-in, to Civil 3D, and I'm taking, from my flat file, and I've scanned a paper document. And this paper document, the goal is to get the parcel outline for this water treatment plant without having to hire the surveyor. Sorry putting you out of business. [LAUGHS] No.

So this is the parcel plat that could be pre-anything, and we're going to change the color depth. So all I've done is I've put it into my model anywhere. I don't care.

And now I've turned it into what's called a bitonal image. It looks horrible. So I'll invert it, so it's now readable as black and white. And I can see that the surveyor did use control points because when you do a plat, you have to put in some kind of control and a baseline and all of that.

So I've put the image in on the side. There is the base from InfraWorks. I've dragged and dropped the survey control points in like I did earlier from the survey database.

Now I'm going to quickly connect the dots. I'm just going to use a polyline and use the point numbers, and I'm going to do point number 1 through 3, comma 1. And it's going to go pfft, like that.

Now imagine if you had a thousand points. That would be a time saver. So I drew the control triangle, the reason being it's just easier for me to see the endpoints.

Good old AutoCAD Align command, and I'm going to pick that image, and I'm going to align the upper-left control point with the northwest control triangle corner. And then I'm going to go to the northeast control point. Now this is not spot-on, but it's close enough. I'm not going to put my engineer stamp on this parcel outline, but it's going to be close enough for my design.

All right, the align command, just two points, and, yes, you scale it. Now what this has done, it's brought it in. It's georeferenced it, and it's scaled it. And then you saw, I changed the layer. I'm changing the layer, and the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to use a vectorization tool.

And I'm going to pick on the outline of the parcel and just click once, and look what it did. It brought the parcel boundary out, put it on a layer that tells it it's the parcel boundary. And now I erase the image because I don't need it anymore. And I don't need the control triangle either, and now I've georeferenced it, OK? And there it is in a GIS environment.

AUDIENCE: Why wouldn't you have just taken it one step further and rubber sheeted that to make sure the image was a bit more accurate?

PRESENTER: Because I looked at it. It was close enough.

AUDIENCE: It was close enough?

PRESENTER: It was close enough.

AUDIENCE: OK.

PRESENTER: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: But that's an option if you want?

PRESENTER: It's an option. But then again, I don't want to assume that this is going to be my real parcel data. But rubber sheeting is an option. If it's really far off, you can use the nice correlation tool of rubber sheeting to do that.

The other thing I want to point out, I had a client the other day. And they had lots and lots of legacy data that they needed to bring into their infrastructure project, and it was architectural feat and decimal inches. And they actually took the time to retrace out the building outlines. And the poor operator, with a calculator, converted the dimensions to metric. Can you imagine?

OK, all they needed to do was take their scan, put it in something like this, and automatically, when it scales and rotates, it doesn't care if it's in inches, millimeters, whatever, it's going to make it the right scale. And just that one trick, I thought this CAD operator was going to cry because all of a sudden what took weeks and weeks and weeks could be handled in a matter of an afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Can you adjust vertically [INAUDIBLE]?

PRESENTER: Uh, hold on. The question was, what about the elevation? Now the next thing we're going to do is we're going to take some CAD work. We're going to fast forward here, and we're now in the 1990s, and we're dealing with an architect.

And so we're going to xref in an architectural drawing that was done in CAD, in AutoCAD or maybe some other CAD product. And I'm going to just put it in anywhere. Again, it just has to be somewhere near my project.

Now this is an architectural drawing. Again, it could be in any kind of units. And I don't have survey control. How am I going to get this georeferenced?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Thank you. The image, it's very obvious. Oh, here's a cool tool. In an xref, if I use the Create From Feature Lines, in Civil 3D and right-click, look what you can do. You can pull lines out of an xref.

Look what I'm going to do. I'm clicking on the xref. Bam, I've pulled that and made it a CAD object in my current drawing.

Who knew that? Shoot I thought I was showing you-- about a third of you knew that. OK, again, layer, I'm being very specific to put this on a layer because logical naming is something you need to start to really be aware of.

OK, now this has been brought up into our georeferenced world. And we're going to use the Align command. And in the Align command, we're going to align it up with the towers.

OK, again, this is not going to be exactly perfect, but for our preliminary and close-to-design process, there it is. Oh, by the way, I also did the Which command to make it 3D.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Extrude or PressPull, so I did take the CAD, and I did extrude it up just a little bit. Oh, where did I get the numbers to extrude it from? The architectural plan. There was an elevation. I just typed in the numbers.

OK, so now I've taken stuff that wasn't BIM-Enabled, and I've turned it into a BIM-Enabled object. So the xref, remember that if you use the Feature Line tool in Civil 3D, you can pull CAD objects out of an xref. The layer as an attribute, it's important that we put things on the correct layer.

Now the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take in GIS data, and this happens to be a pipe network. Now the pipe network, as we can see, I just dragged and dropped this GIS. This happened to be a shape file. It was two different shape files. And if I look at the object data, it's got an awful lot of information.

It's got the x-- the northings and eastings. It has the inverts. It has the pipe names that are connected to it. It has a wealth of information.