InfraWorks, BIM 360, and Esri: How to Get the Most out of the New Integrations

ERIC CHAPPELL: So how many of you here this is your first Autodesk University? That's a lot of people. That's awesome.

OK, anyone been here more than five times? That's a lot of people, too. More than 10 times? More than 15?

Really? That's awesome. So what was the first year you came?

AUDIENCE: '03.

ERIC CHAPPELL: '03?

AUDIENCE: '93.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Was it here in Las Vegas?

AUDIENCE: Chicago.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Chicago, OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: Yeah, that was your first one? Yeah, my first one was here, I think, in '01, '01 or '02. And I was just telling someone else that, at that time, we were excited to have 3,000 people here, and now we're always around 10,000, so it's pretty-- the event has obviously been growing since those days.

So who made the shortest trip here? Anyone live in Las Vegas? No? Who had a fairly short trip? California maybe? Where'd you come from?

AUDIENCE: Los Angeles.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Los Angeles, OK, that's pretty short. Did you drive over?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: How about the furthest? Who thinks they've got the furthest trip?

AUDIENCE: Dubai.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Dubai? That's pretty good.

AUDIENCE: South Africa.

ERIC CHAPPELL: South Africa? I don't know. I'm not good enough at geography to tell which one of those would be further, but they're both really impressive.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: OK, well that answers that question.

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah, there you go. That's awesome. It seems every year we've got more and more people from outside the US attending in Las Vegas, and I just love that. I think it's great.

How about-- let's talk about the work that you do. How many of you-- well, let's talk about applications first. How many of you are pretty solid, like everyday, Civil 3D users? Yeah, that's kind of what I expected.

Anybody not of Civil 3D user? Don't touch it? Don't-- OK, good. [INAUDIBLE] How about InfraWorks? How many of you use InfraWorks on a regular basis? OK.

How many of you use it every once in a while? All right. How many have never touched it? OK, that's a good mix, actually. That's great. That's great.

All right, let's talk about project types now. How many of you do transportation projects? So I'm going to say about 20%.

How many of you do site design, whether it's commercial, or institutional, or-- right? Probably 60%, I would say. Utilities? How many of you do utilities? Great.

And I'm assuming some of you put your hands up more than once because you do different stuff. Yeah, I see some heads nodding. Did anybody attend the futures session last night? Yeah, that was pretty interesting.

Since not every hand went up, I can't talk about what was discussed there, but I can tell you there are some pretty exciting things coming up with Civil 3D, and InfraWorks, and BIM 360, and lots of other products, so these are exciting times we live in with Autodesk integrating a lot of our products together in ways we never did before. So it's great to see, which is, you know, of course, our topic today. Still got a few minutes so I'm going to wait. I like to start on time in case there's any late comers.

Has anyone seen any shows here in Las Vegas? You guys are dedicated. You're, like, focusing all your energy on Autodesk University, right? I saw Mystere Monday night, so that was really good, highly recommend it.

Yeah, and if you're up for some fresh air, Red Rock Canyon is like 20 minutes away so it's a great place to drive up, get out of the car, climb some rocks. You know, it's not hard. It's not hard climbing. You know, if you're a serious climber, you can, of course, do that, but you can almost kind of go up there dressed like this and just walk around on the rocks. It's really fun.

All right, I think the wave has dissipated. Thank you. All right, well let's go ahead and get started. My name's Eric Chappell, and I know today's class is entitled "InfraWorks, BIM 360, and Esri-- How to Get the Most Out of the New Integrations," but to be honest, I started going through the content for this class, and there was so much to talk about with InfraWorks that I just kind of ran out of space for the other instructors. So I shot Cara and Brooks an email late last night and said, you know what, guys, you can just sleep in. I'm not going to need you.

And I didn't get an email back. I think they might be a little upset so I'm not sure what's going to happen here, but we're going to focus on InfraWorks today because it's awesome in its own right, and I'm going to start off with Model Builder. So sorry for the-- I'm not sure why that hasn't switched. Let me try something here. OK, there we go.

So I'm going to start out with Model Builder. And for those of you, especially, who aren't familiar with InfraWorks, Model Builder couldn't be more awesome. We're going to focus in on an area in Denver, an actual intersection, 11th and Mariposa.

And we're thinking of, let's say, putting a new Autodesk office there, right? So zoom into an area that we want to study. It's a great tool for choosing a location for a client, and you know, I'm just going to enter a name for my model. I'll call it New Autodesk Office.

And I've got a kind of a bogus, just generic, BIM 360 project that I dump all my InfraWorks models into. It's called InfraWorks Models. It's really creative. So I'll just grab that and dump my model into the project folders location.

And just like that, what's happened is I've sent a request up to the internet, and InfraWorks is going to go out there and gather data from OpenStreetMaps and from the USGS in this case for terrain since I'm in the United States. It's going to get, also from OpenStreetMaps, roads, water features, buildings, rail, if we've got rail. So it's, you know, grabbing a lot of data for me.

Also, imagery is coming from Bing Maps. And typically, it takes about two minutes for the tile to pop up for the model to be ready, and then maybe another, depending on the size of the area that you pick, couple of minutes for it to download. Now, in a training environment, two to four minutes seems like an eternity so I'm going to go ahead and open a model that I created beforehand.

And this is basically the same result you would have seen so you know, we've got a very comprehensive model in just a short time, in a couple of minutes, two to four minutes, typically. We've got roads. We've got buildings. We've got water features. We've got rail.

We've got aerial imagery. We've got terrain, although this area is pretty flat. And you can see I've already been doing some strange design in here as well. So I mean, just like that, in a couple of minutes you've got all of your project contexts already built and with almost no effort at all, so I mean, you have to admit it doesn't get any better than that, right?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Woah, woah, woah. What do you mean it doesn't get any better than that?

ERIC CHAPPELL: Cara, you didn't get my email?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Folks--

ERIC CHAPPELL: This is awkward. I'm sorry guys.

[LAUGHTER]

So what are you talking about?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Do you ever collaborate? Do you ever have a data exchange with other people? Do you ever share information with other people?

ERIC CHAPPELL: Use email all the time.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Not email management, though.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Yeah, that's true. That's true. So what are you thinking here?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Would you mind if I showed you some BIM 360?

ERIC CHAPPELL: I think that would be a great idea.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Hi, guys.

ERIC CHAPPELL: It's all yours.

[APPLAUSE]

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Hi, guys. I'm Cara Wilczynski. I'm a subject matter expert in construction. You're probably wondering why I'm here because I've got that construction slapped at the end of my title, and I think that the industry itself, the AEC world, constantly struggles with very similar situations. So being able to communicate with many different parties-- you're talking to them through many different channels.

So for example, email-- what other channels do you communicate your data through? I imagine a Dropbox, or Box, Box Sync, SharePoint, things like that.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Let's do a show of hands. I mean, how many of you, your primary form of communication or exchange of design files is email? Yeah, don't be afraid to admit it. All right, what's next? Is it Dropbox? Is it FTP? I mean--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: What's that? Oh, so the network internally? So you're just sharing files on the server? OK.

AUDIENCE: ProjectWise.

ERIC CHAPPELL: ProjectWise.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah.

ERIC CHAPPELL: WeTransfer, OK. OK, so just kind of generic file transfer.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah, and that kind of ties into the fact that everybody is on a different platform. Everybody's using a different space. There's no way to link up all that information for everybody to really work in a cohesive environment, and BIM 360, have the ability to do that.

So what I'm going to show you today is a couple of different things-- so one, how to exchange your information, make sure that you are able to communicate. I'm able to communicate with Eric on certain data that I want to share with him. I'm also going to talk to you about how to see that data and see the trail of data that you have contributed to this particular project in BIM 360.

So you can see a long-running trail of the activity within the project, and just how to track it, and make sure that, you know, maybe you do a design review. I work with Eric, and he's my civil guy. I'm a construction manager, and I just want to make sure that he knows about some issues that maybe I run into, and there's some kind of documentation of that. Does that make sense to you guys? Do you think that would be applicable for you? Cool.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Let's talk about design review for a second. I mean, how do you go about-- when you come up with a design, how do you go about communicating that review cycle with, say, your project manager? I mean, who's still using paper markups, right? You can admit it. We know it's out there.

All right, how else are you doing it? How is that review markup exchange going on? [INAUDIBLE]. Revizto, OK. Any others? What's that?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: OK, Docs. Great, please continue.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: OK, great. So first, talk about this particular environment and this user interface. It's pretty cohesive. On the left-hand side, you can see a panel of a bunch of different files. Now, that could be set up differently on each project, whatever kind of works for your company.

And essentially, you can set up that file structure in a way so that you can give people and set permissioning for each folder in that file structure. So you can go into permissioning. There are five levels of permissions, and there are three different ways you can permission-- through a role, a company, or an individual.

Now, this kind of cues up a question, I think. With Eric, maybe, he doesn't want me to see certain information quite yet because he's still working on some kind of design, so he puts me in the contractor role.

ERIC CHAPPELL: And I'm still mad at you for crashing my class so I'll probably keep you out of some stuff for that too.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: He puts me in a contractor role so that when he sets up his folders I can only see the folders that have access for a contractor to see so it gives you a little bit more flexibility and configurability to this particular folder structure permissioning settings.

ERIC CHAPPELL: And just to expand on that or to gain some more understanding, the reason for the roles-- contractor, engineer, architect-- is, when you've got large numbers of people in a project, you can kind of put them all in a bucket and say, you know, these five or six people are all architects, and they have this set of permissions. So it's a time-saving measure, correct?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yep, exactly.

ERIC CHAPPELL: But if you want to be really granular with permissions, you can do it down to the individual person--

CARA WILCZYNSKI: That's correct.

ERIC CHAPPELL: --and the individual folder within BIM 360. So for all of you InfraWorks users who've seen the older forms of collaboration, it's a lot more robust than what we've had in the past, where you basically created a group and invited people in. This is much more granular than that.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah, it kind of touches upon the fact that this is more of a-- that seems like a high-trust environment, and this is a multi-trust environment so really it gives you the opportunity to show what to who when.

So the other really great feature here that I find beneficial because-- so when I was in the field, I'd get, you know, these civil documents. I'd get the civil guys out on site. Maybe I'd just be trying to figure out where the boundary lines were, any kind of underground work, things like that. Now, I look at this, and I would see this as something that would have been beneficial for me because I can actually pan around in this model, see the actual boundary lines, look at the actual visual aspect of InfraWorks because you can bring that InfraWorks file directly into document management.

And I don't even own InfraWorks. I don't have it on my computer, and, thankfully, Eric was nice enough to upload it to the project so that I could look at it.

ERIC CHAPPELL: And I think that's one of the-- we were talking a moment ago about other solutions that you may be using. One of the big advantages of BIM 360 is the number of design file types that are viewable in the browser environment, InfraWorks being one of them. You know, if you're using Dropbox, or Google Drive, or some other file exchange, you're not going to be able to open an InfraWorks model in that native environment. That's only going to happen in BIM 360, and that's true of other file formats as well, RVT, DWG, many others. But it also opens your more everyday file formats, like PDF, as well.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah, and at this time there are around 40 viewable file formats within BIM 360.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: That's different than a shared view. That is an InfraWorks model. So the question was, "Is that a shared view?" And the answer is, no, that's actually-- shared view is a separate thing, and shared view is for general everybody, whether they have BIM 360 or not.

This is actually a model that's been published to BIM 360, and because of that, you're enabled all of the features that BIM 360 has to offer. And if you've got all of the modules activated, it's not just Docs, which is what we're showing today, but Design, Glue, other applications. Then, now, you're incorporating your InfraWorks model into all of that other capability across the Project.

Shared views are nice, too, but they're more of a quick one-off. This is a live model. You could go into InfraWorks, make a change, and sync the changes back up to here. Good question.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: OK, so on the line of communication, say I'm looking at this InfraWorks model, and I say, you know what, I don't really like the path around the building. I really need to communicate with Eric and say that this really needs to change. Maybe we should look at some of the brick lay or something, something more granular. We got to edit something.

So I create this issue within BIM 360 document management, and I have the ability to assign the issue, actually create it as an observation, which you can actually do on a pretty configurable level. So at the beginning of your project, you can configure custom issue types so that when you're searching for certain information you say, OK, so this is an observation issue, or this is a design issue. And in creating this issue, I have the ability to assign it to Eric, set a due date, and then create it. And the ability to create this particular issue will help us communicate back and forth between my job trailer and his office, and it leaves a trail.

So not only is Eric notified immediately, via email, that there is an issue that is tied to this particular model, but he can come into the system and go in a little bit deeper. So when I go into this particular issue, I can see any kind of pertinent information that I've just input. I can add files to it-- photos, images, even files like CAD files. So you can do it within the system, so within document management within the project files, or you have the ability to add a file from your desktop or your server. So over here on the left-hand side, you can see the activity feed of that particular issue. So it says I created it, the status was open, it was assigned to Eric, and it gives you that kind of running role of information.

Now, in construction we call that litigation mitigation because if there is any point in time that there's a question-- something didn't show up or information didn't get communicated-- this is solid proof that it happened on this date at this time, and it was assigned to this person.

ERIC CHAPPELL: How many of you have searched back through old emails to track down something like that? Everybody, right? You know, somebody said they turned something in, and you're pretty sure they didn't, and it's kind of back and forth until you find that email that either proves or disproves so this is so much easier to look through the history of information exchange in the project and see what's really been done, and that that's true internally or externally.

One of the file sharing methods that was mentioned was your internal network, and that's great in your internal email because you can track what's going on inside your company. But I mean, in today's world, we're all interacting with outside entities as well, architects, planning boards, things like that. So this is the Cloud so you can invite anyone into these projects, and exchange information, and track the activities that take place.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: And then on a whole other level of tracking, you have the ability to go in from a project administrative level and see all of the activities and how each person on your project interacts with the documents or data that resides within the platform. So as you can see, there's this running list. It gives the time, and date, and who did certain things.

So say, for example, I want to go into this particular issue that Eric assigned me. I can go in, and I can see everything that has been assigned to me or all the information that's pertinent within this particular issue. And it's, again, one of those things where you're not going back, trying to dig in your email to make sure that it made it to that folder, that it was from Eric, and what date did he send it to me. And then after the project, you have all of these archived emails. It's all holistically here. It's in one space, and it be accessed by the people that you want it to be available to.

ERIC CHAPPELL: I was thinking back to those notification emails you were talking about earlier, and not only do you receive one of those when you're assigned an issue, but it also has a link right in the email that you can click on. It will take you right to the issue in the model. So searching through email is one thing, and finding where something happened, but then finding the drawing, or the model, or the file that it happened in and the location in the model where it happened, that's a whole additional level of complexity. And you know, the simplicity of just getting an email saying, there's an issue. You need to address it.

Clicking a link and going right to that spot in the model, I mean, that could save you potentially an hour right there of having to track things down so it's a--

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Absolutely.

ERIC CHAPPELL: --great project management system and activity management system.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: All right, yeah.

ERIC CHAPPELL: So since Cara was so kind--

CARA WILCZYNSKI: I actually--

ERIC CHAPPELL: --to a crash our course--

CARA WILCZYNSKI: I actually had to go crash another class.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Well, before you go, does anyone have any additional BIM 360 questions? Please.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

CARA WILCZYNSKI: So there are around 40 supportable file formats within BIM 360. In the handout, there's actually a link directly to what file formats are supported.

ERIC CHAPPELL: And--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: Not FedRAMP. I'm not sure about the FIPS, but we're constantly working on upgrading our security certifications every day, so stay tuned. The question was, is it FedRAMP or FIPS certified? And I know for a fact it's not FedRAMP. I'm not sure about the other one, but I also know that we're all always actively working on that.

Something else, really important, I forgot to mention is that-- a couple of things, actually. One is, if you're new to BIM 360, which I'm assuming many of you are-- in fact, let's see a show of hands. How many of you have ever used BIM 360? OK, wow, that's great, about half the room, I'd say. So for the other half of you who haven't used it or maybe don't have an active subscription, you can get a one-year preview of BIM 360 Docs if you've subscribed to the AEC collection.

And there is information in your handout, including a link to a page with all the information about how to do that. So even if you don't have BIM 360, we're giving it away for a year for you to try it out and see what it can do for you, not only in the InfraWorks perspective, but anything to do with your project. The other thing you'll need to do-- so what I'm hoping is that you'll all go back to your offices next week and fire up InfraWorks, get your BIM 360 trial. You'll need to know how to create your first BIM 360 project, right?

So what I should have done when I had in InfraWorks up on the screen, instead of picking a bogus, generic project to dump all my InfraWorks models in, which is horrible-- don't ever do that-- I should have picked a real project that, instead of InfraWorks sitting by itself, it actually becomes part of the overall project, along with [? Revit ?] models, and Civil 3D files, and whatever else, PDFs, you name it, word documents, Excel spreadsheets, whatever. That's what I should have done. And when you activate-- so the first time you create a model that you want to publish to BIM 360, you'll have to create a project, and that step-by-step procedure is also in your handout, so you can see how to do both of those things.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah, and I think, to kind of touch on what Eric's saying, what we just showed you, we're just scratching the surface of the capability that you guys can actually take it to the next level. I mean, we just got a review functionality last week. There are many different things that are coming out that are supporting the industry, supporting you guys, on a bi-weekly basis, so it's like a good present you get to open every couple of weeks

ERIC CHAPPELL: Yeah, if you thought InfraWorks development was rapid, wait till you see BIM 360 development. Like Cara said, it's every couple of weeks there are new features being added. And because it's a cloud technology, it's effortless. It just gets updated when it needs to, and you don't have to do anything. So I saw some more questions, some more hands going up.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: [? Can ?] InfraWorks have the same workflow of a [INAUDIBLE] [? package, ?] [? share, ?] [? and ?] [? consume? ?]

ERIC CHAPPELL: So does InfraWorks have the workflow? What you're describing is the workflow of BIM 360 Design.

AUDIENCE: Yes.

ERIC CHAPPELL: And the answer is no. It's actually simpler. When you publish your model, or when you create your model initially in model builder, you simply choose a folder in BIM 360 Docs to place that file, and it's actually a pointer to the InfraWorks model. You'll see whatever you name the model-- like I named mine Autodesk Office. You'll see a file in that folder, if you go into the BIM 360 environment, AutodeskOffice.IWM. And each time, as far as within InfraWorks, the workflow is identical to what it was before.

When you make some changes and you want to sync them up, you click the sync icon, and just like before, the changes go up. So within InfraWorks, there hasn't been a lot of change to the workflow. Only now, instead of pointing to a group, that kind of InfraWorks proprietary sharing system, we now have moved that over to BIM 360, so the syncing and all that is still the same internally. Hopefully that answers your question. Yes?

AUDIENCE: I've used various pieces of the BIM 360 products, and I've found the licensing kind of confusing. With this collaboration scenario, who needs to own the license [? to play ?] [INAUDIBLE].

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah, so with what we just showed you with document management, it has to be structured in a way where, you know, your company purchases X amount of license share, and you invite people to your party. So that is how document management works. Now, that's not to say that's the same as design collaboration, which was just brought up.

It's very different. You can have a license and you can bring it to the party. So if that makes any sense.

AUDIENCE: So say you start a project and you have 10 licenses.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yep.

AUDIENCE: Can you only invite 10 people in? Or can you invite 20 with only 10 [INAUDIBLE] viewing or participating [INAUDIBLE]?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: So if you purchased 10 licenses, only 10 people can come in. However, those 10 people have an unlimited amount of projects that they can be a part of.

AUDIENCE: OK, and then if I need an 11th, I can either buy another license, or I can remove one of [INAUDIBLE]?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: That's correct. Yep, you have the flexibility to add and take out people from whatever your environment looks like.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] [? share ?] [? environment ?] [? issues ?] [? a license ?] [? to the user ?] [INAUDIBLE] that that email gets a license issued to that person [INAUDIBLE]?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: So what happens when you're-- so when you're assigning licenses-- so the question is about-- it's around licensure. So when you are assigning people to your account, they automatically get an email. They have to log into the system, and I don't think that it becomes active-- their username and password becomes an active user with them BIM 360-- until they log in. So if they log in, it does start to take up that seat, but you have to invite them to your party within the document management module. Does that make sense? Did I answer your question?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I'm just curious how it works with the [INAUDIBLE]?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yeah, the enterprise is a little bit different. It's structured a little bit different, and I'm not as familiar with that.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Any other BIM 360 questions? Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ERIC CHAPPELL: I can describe it to you. It would take a little too long for the time we have to show you, but where I selected my project, it was just called InfraWorks models. I could have scrolled down one line, and picked an actual project and a folder within that project and simply selected it. That's all there is to it. So your BIM 360 projects are already there when you fire up InfraWorks, and you just simply choose a folder within one of those projects, just like if you were choosing a folder on your network, and it's that simple. That's where the model gets published to.

AUDIENCE: So if I already own a license to BIM 360, but I've been invited [? to somebody ?] [? else's ?] [? project, ?] I'm using my license, or I'm using one of [? theirs? ?]

CARA WILCZYNSKI: So the question is, if you have been invited to a BIM 360 project, are you using your license or are you using one of their licenses? The answer to that is you are using one of their licenses. So at any time, they could probably kick you off.

AUDIENCE: And you can't use your license, can you?

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Sorry, what was that?

AUDIENCE: You can't use your own license. You have to use one of theirs, [? correct? ?]

ERIC CHAPPELL: For Docs, yes.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: For Docs, yes, unless you own your own project, and you're inviting a bunch of people. Yeah, it's kind of a one-sided environment there. So you're either invited and you share, or you create it, and you invite everybody. Sorry, what?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Glue, does work that way, I believe, yes. Yep?

ERIC CHAPPELL: The only one that doesn't is Design. Design--

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Yes.

ERIC CHAPPELL: --you can bring your own license with you and join in on the project, but all the other parts, you have to have to be given a license by the host.

AUDIENCE: And Design is C4R?

ERIC CHAPPELL: Yes.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Correct.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Design Is the new version of C4R. Yes. All right, well, before you go Cara, I just kind of wanted to sum things up and say, you know, I was wrong. I'm sorry. Should have it should have not dropped you off the class because with all of the great things that InfraWorks can do, being able to build context very quickly, as I showed you in a couple of minutes, combine that with all of the collaboration, and information exchange capabilities, and tracking capabilities of BIM 360, I mean, it really doesn't get any better than that.

CARA WILCZYNSKI: It doesn't.

BROOKS PATRICK: Not so fast, Eric. I should've known--

CARA WILCZYNSKI: Bye, guys.

ERIC CHAPPELL: --this was going to happen again.

BROOKS PATRICK: You can't kick us out of this party. So I'm Brooks Patrick. I'm actually from Esri. This is my first Autodesk University, so it's a pleasure to be here this week with you guys.

[APPLAUSE]

So a show of hands-- how many people use GIS or have encountered it in their work? OK, so we're going to talk a little bit about GIS, and in particular, ArcGIS and the new integration work that we've been doing with Autodesk recently. And really, just to start off, GIS, as many of you are familiar with, is a fundamental language for really applying lots of data to solve some really critical challenges. And it's really to not only examine environmental effects and impacts of different programs that we put into our projects, but it's also to just understand initially what's going on in our project area, and where is it even suitable to change for our project work.

So when it comes to ArcGIS, there are some fundamental components. ArcGIS itself works with all different data types. It's an aggregator, unstructured, structured, 2D data, and 3D data. ArcGIS, you might be familiar with, is a lot of times seen as 2D maps but, actually, we've added a lot of new capability for point clouds, 3D data of all different types.

And with that aggregation of data into layers hosted in ArcGIS online, which is very similar to BIM 360, we can then pull that data down into InfraWorks and further use it in the Autodesk suite but also in the Esri platform. So we have, for example, CityEngine, which does site development, which is very complementary to InfraWorks in that regards. And then we also have ArcGIS Pro. So how many of you guys are familiar with ArcMap?

OK, right, so if you're familiar with ArcMap and the desktop products-- [? scene, ?] [? globe, ?] [? catalog-- ?] all of these have basically been combined in the last, I would say, half decade into what we call now ArcGIS Pro. ArcGIS Pro then allows you to work with these web services, edit them, and synchronize that data up to the cloud. We also have Field Tools that allow you to take maps out into the field, collect data-- we'll be going through collector-- and also, actually, customize surveys. And then operations dashboard actually will let you look at the data in real time and, depending on how often it's updated, actually monitor the progress.

So many of you probably have seen this wheel. So when we started the integration talks between Esri and Autodesk, we examined, really, what is the challenge here? And really, what we've found is that with asset and operation management you actually have GIS being used for capital operations, being able to plan, design, and basically provide services with assets in location. And then on the right side of this wheel, you really have the project lifecycle or the delivery of the BIM process, which needs GIS in the earliest point possible to further get rid of downstream issues that has to do with just having data up to date.

And then on the return trip, we want to make sure that the BIM data coming from [? Revit ?] it or any of the programs can make that easily back into the [? geo ?] database and back into, whether it's the client-- it might be the city-- or it's the actual customer, be it a new facility manager. So in working forward in this integration, we've actually taken some initial steps. You're probably familiar with ArcGIS for AutoCAD. It's been around for about a decade now, which is a plug-in for AutoCAD that allows you to synchronize data being georeferenced in AutoCAD and worked on, back to the ArcGIS cloud.

We've also started to work on InfraWorks integration. So all of the work that I'm about to show you in ArcGIS Online can actually be brought back down into InfraWorks and used dynamically. And as that data updates, you can actually refresh your InfraWorks model.

We're working further on different integration points, both from data from Esri to Autodesk, but also from Autodesk back to Esri, so we can actually read RVT directly into ArcGIS Pro recently, which is a brilliant development that allows us to make use of Revit data and to actually bring that back in for operations and management.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Brooks, while you're switching over to your demo, just like to bring up a couple of things. One is, much like you have the one-year preview offer with BIM 360, you also have access to a one-year preview offer of ArcGIS. There's information in your handout about how to get ahold of that.

There's also information in your handout about how to get the data from ArcGIS into InfraWorks. There's a step-by-step there. It's actually really simple.

If you pull up your Data Sources window in InfraWorks, the same one you used to bring in all kinds of data, you'll now see, if you have the latest version, there's an extra icon at the top which looks like the Esri globe icon. You click that, you log into ArcGIS, and pull in whatever data you need. And of course, Brooks is going to expand on what does that mean.

What kinds of data can you bring in? What kind of capability does that give you? And it's pretty amazing, as you're about to see.

BROOKS PATRICK: Yeah, so even before I log into ArcGIS and just start going through the tools, how many of you just need access to data that's out there for-- Yeah, OK. So I just want to start with just saying that, as Esri, we build software for the AEC community, but what we also build is open data software for local government, whether it's at the county or city scale. So here, it's just a great place to start when looking for data.

You actually have our open data site here, and what you can do is actually just type in-- so Washington, DC, a city, for example, and maybe the data that you're looking for. So I'll search "3D data." So here you can actually look at buildings in 3D, download it, or just use the web service. But in general here, you can actually search all about 6,000 municipal organizations that share data around the world. It's not just domestic, and browse the 100,000 or so layers that are dynamically updated by the government.

So let me go ahead and log into ArcGIS here. This is similar to BIM 360. It's Esri Cloud. It's also, actually, available on Enterprise as well for disconnected, off-the-internet use. So by logging in, what I can actually see is my content, which there's not much because I'm actually logged in here as a member of a larger group.

So groups are very similar to projects, I would say, in BIM 360. It's how we can organize ourselves around data and access to data. Because I'm logged into this organization, I can actually invite other users from other organizations, new members, for example, or add new data. There's currently 20 data layers in here, and so it actually allows me to share a very focused set of layers for certain projects. In this case, I'm going to open up a map and just take you through our 2D side of GIS or our web mapping ability.

So here you actually have Fayetteville, Arkansas. You have a number of different data layers for fire hydrants, for example. In the web, you actually can go in to your content. You can change the symbology.

We actually have Smart Mapping integrated, so depending on the data that you're using, it will actually suggest different mapping algorithms to use. We also have a lot of different symbol sets that come pre-configured that can be used for any project. Another thing that we've introduced to the web that you might be familiar with in ArcMap, for example, if you're familiar with that product, is the ability to run geoprocessing analysis. So we've actually brought a lot of that to the web that just utilizes the cloud for that processing, to summarize data, to enrich data using Esri's demographic layers, which have 5-, 10-year projections if you're interested in that.

We also can analyze patterns-- for example, hotspot analysis-- or even do drive times. So I'm going to actually add a layer to my map here. I've actually added the field ops center for my onsite project here. I've added this point right here in the middle of the parking lot as the staging location, let's say.

And I want to find out, based on that location, what is the drive time around that location to all of my different fire hydrants? So I'm going to do a one- and two-minute driving time. I'm going to use the traffic at a specific condition at a certain time of day, so let's take, for example, Wednesday. And what time is it now? It's about 9:00. Let's do 9:00 AM.

And so I'm going to go ahead and say, run analysis. So while that runs, really this is making use of the cloud for all of its computing power, but also, you can run many different analyses at the same time. So really quick, I'm going to jump back over to PowerPoint because I'm not going to try and mirror my screen here.

But Eric, you're a civil engineer. You're probably wondering, how do we keep this data up to date, right?

ERIC CHAPPELL: Yeah, I mean, how many of you have opened a file or run into a file, and you're not really sure if it's the most up-to-date version or not? Yeah, all the time, right? So I'd be totally interested in hearing how we keep our files up to date.

BROOKS PATRICK: Yeah, so we build tools to actually take out into the field. So this is my iPhone here. It also works on Android, but it's called Collector. It's probably one of the most useful apps that we see being used to go out and take field inspections, for example. What you see in the background here is actually taking that same web map and dropping it into operations dashboard. It's one of the free apps, similar to Collector, that just come with ArcGIS Online.

So you can see here, as I click on the map, it's actually taking me to that location. It's using the location of my phone, but then you're able to manually correct that geolocation because it's plus or minus 5 meters, depending on if you have good connection. But what you're able to do is author new data or inspect existing data, and you can actually do all of this without opening desktop software at all. This is pretty easy to setup. So once you, for example, add a new hydrant there, it will appear wherever that data layer is being used, whether it's through a web map, or dashboard, or even in InfraWorks, right, if that layer is being pulled down.

ERIC CHAPPELL: Brooks, going back to what you showed a few minutes ago, something that really struck me as being huge is, when you did the travel time analysis, anytime you do an analysis in ArcGIS, it actually creates a new data layer, right?

BROOKS PATRICK: Exactly.

ERIC CHAPPELL: And that layer can be-- like the colored areas here for the traffic analysis, that layer can then be brought back into InfraWorks. So I mean, there are countless analyses that you can do in ArcGIS, and all of those can be visualized inside of your InfraWorks model because those data layers can be pulled in from ArcGIS. So just the amount of analysis that you can do and display is mind boggling.

BROOKS PATRICK: Exactly.

ERIC CHAPPELL: If I'm understanding that correctly.

BROOKS PATRICK: It's exactly right. So that new layer of data can be pulled back into InfraWorks or used in more analysis. So in this case, I can take the travel times that I just generated, and I can actually enrich that with all sorts of demographic data that we, at Esri, curate, and we can append that data, run that analysis too. And that will actually append new information to that layer of data that can then be used for symbology and your map or just a better understanding of what's going on in your scene.

So I'm going to switch now to 3D. Esri has put a lot of effort into developing 3D mapping capability that is, in all regards, the same set of capability that you'd expect in 2D mapping. So how many of you actually work in 3D quite a bit? Right, OK.

So what we've actually done is introduced what we're calling "web scenes." Web scenes are fully within the browser, similar to web maps. What you're seeing here is not only USGS, but also our partners, Airbus, who've contributed terrain, and imagery data, and all of our base maps, basically, for the entire world.

And what this is allowing us to do is actually bring in our 3D data but also our 2D data into a 3D environment. So in this case, I'm just going to use an example that I've been involved in recently with Honolulu. They've actually gone ahead and scanned most of the island for LIDAR, and so what you see here is actually all of the Honolulu point cloud, which is actually available through their open data.