Digging into Surface Modeling with Civil 3D and ArcGIS

MICHAEL DAVIDSON: Welcome, everyone, to our one-hour technical instruction session digging into surface modeling with Civil 3D and ArcGIS. I'm Michael Davidson. I'm Esri's product manager for CAD BIM integrations in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS for AutoCAD. And I'm very happy to have a colleague joining me today. Ramesh, want to say hello?

RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Hi. I'm Ramesh Sridharan. I'm a senior product manager from Autodesk. So I'll take the safe harbor statement. Most of the contents you see today are already in the product or the released version.

But Michael and I are very passionate about this. We might end up-- if we end up saying something that's on the release in the development or something, I don't want you guys to make any purchasing decision based on this session. So be careful. Go ahead, Michael.

MICHAEL DAVIDSON: OK, setting the stage for the technical content and our focus for today, this session is all about surface modeling extending across Civil 3D and ArcGIS. And we have four objectives for this class.

First, we want to better equip you and your teams to assess and visualize ground surfaces in multiple environments. Second, we're going to walk through some recent Esri developments that streamline the process of bringing surfaces from Civil 3D models and files and building up what are called terrain data sets as part of 3D scenes in ArcGIS Pro.

Third, we'll show how surface data can be integrated across Civil 3D and ArcGIS as part of maintaining one system of record for your projects. Bringing together these three objectives, we'll showcase as a fourth objective how these automation and integration capabilities allow for more collaboration between civil engineers and GIS professionals.

I'm going to now turn it over to Ramesh for some introductory remarks.

RAMESH SRIDHARAN: Absolutely. So when we talk about the Autodesk and Esri collaboration, it's not new for folks like you. Gathering the existing conditions is the key for any design project. But when you do that, you request, receive, and import the [INAUDIBLE] data. And that process can be a very disconnected process.

And that takes time, sometimes days and weeks. And it's also not just a one way. As a designer, you have to update it back, so that you can share with your counterparts and the stakeholders as the design always continuously evolves.

Inaccurate data, and the project delays, and the poor decisions can lead to increased cost, risk, and not to mention the environmental impact because that's a key we need to avoid for every single project. That's the crux of Autodesk and Esri's relationship. We want our strategic alliance to make sure GIS properly informs BIM and BIM fuels GIS, so that as a user you get the best of both worlds.

We started off with a connector for ArcGIS, which in a nutshell accessing the existing conditions data from your design or a modeling product, like Civil 3D or Infraworks, anytime, anywhere during your project life cycle. And it's not just getting the data. You should be able to sync it back, have a 360 workflow, make it fluent, and inform decisions.

And the benefit is enormous. You can obviously see that this helps designers and engineers to start off on the right foot and ensure improved product data exchange resulting in a lot of operational efficiency throughout the project life cycle for that matter. This definitely reduces the risk, rework, and environmental impacts by resolving issues earlier than what you needed.

That obviously speeds up the overall design time process, saves cost, and ultimately improves the resiliency. And connector also ensures all the stakeholders involved in the project understand how current design impacts existing site conditions, so any project contributors can ensure they're working from the same baseline design while coordinating good design decisions.

And it can be anything. It could be a partial data, or the survey points, or the water boundaries, or geotechnical, or the hydrology, or aerial imagery. The list is endless. The idea is get the existing conditions data to your fingertips during the design process makes it more efficient. That's all this Autodesk-Esri relationship is about when we started. And it's growing much, much bigger than that.

And when you talk about how we started it, just a quick thought is basically we started as a desktop workflow, like I showed you before from Infraworks, or the Civil 3D, or the Map 3D connector ArcGIS online or ArcGIS portal, getting the data, have a 360 workflow enormously helps the users. Then we moved on to the cloud-based, enhanced to the cloud-based workflows, where visual aggregation of your project data beyond just Civil 3D and map.

It could be a Revit or the NavVis. Anything with the Autodesk Construction Cloud and the Esri Cloud can connect together, so as a project manager type persona, you get the best of both worlds and be on top of your project. Now we are moving forward with a platform level so that accessing the base maps and other living atlas, those information from Esri through in any Autodesk products, like Infoworks and Tandem and even Autodesk [INAUDIBLE] as well.

So as you see, we want to make sure this integration is across the portfolio, giving the users a good set of tools to make your project more successful. Back to you, Michael.

MICHAEL DAVIDSON: Thanks, Ramesh. All right, so let's introduce the who and the why that motivated today's session on surfaces. So imagine any site development project you worked on. And you may think of things characterizing the existing ground across the site, or modeling the proposed ground and improve surfaces, or analyzing the differences for your earthworks team.

You may also be thinking of the need to provide visualizations to stakeholders as the project progresses. You might be grimacing at the challenges you faced in keeping everyone on the same page as new site data came along, or the streams of proposed design changes and how you weather them, or the frustration of working with design data only to realize it's out of date.

And once the project construction is complete, the energy needed to gather the project details together and work with other teams to provide as builts for use in maintenance and operations. So we aim to soften these pain points for three roles, field professionals, like surveyors gathering and updating field measurements, design professionals, like civil engineers creating existing and proposed site models, and then GIS professionals, like GIS analysts incorporating broader contexts for visualization and additional analysis.

Today we want you coming away from this more aware of just some of the many options and capabilities across Civil 3D and ArcGIS that allow for things like those field professionals to centrally store and smoothly augment their field data, for designers and GIS professionals to rest assured that they're drawing from one centralized set of the latest field measurements for characterizing and visualizing existing ground, to more easily leverage surface models created in Civil 3D.

And that these professionals are using the same key surface model components throughout design, construction, and beyond. So ultimately, we want to foster more cross-team collaboration. Let's now introduce the how for today's session. There are many, many ways that surface modeling can be carried out across Civil 3D and ArcGIS.

And we recognize that surface design is not a linear process. But given our available time today, we've selected just a few example workflows to share with you over the next hour. And we're going to cover two pathways for surface modeling.

Horizontally along the top row of this figure, we'll begin with things that may be a little bit more familiar. That's things like supplying field measurements to designers, working on desktop machines Civil 3D to create triangular irregular network or 10 surfaces. Next, we'll turn to the GIS analysts working in ArcGIS Pro and showcase recent advances that allow streamlined processing of those Civil 3D 10 surfaces for producing equivalent surface entities, like terrain data sets, as well as bringing together design files and GIS data for creating 3D scenes that can be visualized and assessed for projects along with incorporation of the surrounding built and natural context.

We'll not shy away from giving tips and tricks for publishing these 3D scenes out to the web for stakeholder visualization through ArcGIS Online. That's all along the top row. So after traversing that top row of workflows covered today, we're going to follow along and introduce some components from that bottom pathway.

And this time we'll draw from a centralized platform, like ArcGIS Enterprise, for storing existing and key components of surface model data. So the field professional, the civil engineer, the GIS analyst, they can all transact on that centralized data through ArcGIS feature services while working within their respective tools. And we'll demonstrate the collaboration opportunities afforded by having this one system of record while working in Civil 3D itself.

So we've introduced the who, the why, and the how. And so for one of our final level sets for today's session, let me introduce the what. We're going to make use of an illustrative airport data set in Civil 3D, in ArcGIS Pro, and ArcGIS Online . And we'll even revisit the data set a few times in Civil 3D under different pathways of that workflow slide that I showed a minute ago.

Now, accompanying this data set is a hypothetical project scenario, where our project team is responsible for designing replacement runway surfaces for this airport. And you can see from the screenshot on the left, the airport data set includes surface model content not just pertaining to the existing ground conditions throughout the airport area say and near the start of the project.

But it also includes surface model content associated with the proposed or maybe even as-built conditions such as the band plots of elevation shown in the rightmost screenshot for the runway surfaces in ArcGIS Pro shown on the right there. Recalling the first of our four objectives for today, we'll see a running theme over the next several minutes that emphasizes visualizing and assessing surfaces in multiple environments.

So please prepare yourselves as we are going to be showing several demos. And we're going to use several different tools. And each one of those demos dives head first into the how.

Nonetheless, what we're really aiming for here with that level of granularity is to enable you to carry out these passive execution in your own project workflows. Returning to the overview of the workflows that we have selected to cover for you today and just visually scanning that top row, recall that we're going to be visiting a series of stops along a predominantly desktop-based set of workflows.

And we're going to begin with a brief high level visit to a surface modeling workflow that may be familiar to many of you civil engineers out there. And in this workflow as a civil engineer, we're going to take in field measurements and use them as part of creating 10 surfaces right from within our Civil 3D desktop environment.

These 10 surfaces would inform the design for any built components of our project, like the replacement runways. And the 10 surfaces could be incorporated into other design files and processes ranging from BIM models over in Revit to the numerous options and workflow pathways that are available using ArcGIS.

That's what we're going to focus on throughout today's class. So for our first demo, like I said, we'll put on that hat of a civil engineer who is responsible for, say, making direct use of survey field measurements for the airport site. And we'll create a 10 surface model in Civil 3D that characterizes those existing ground conditions.

And in addition, because we're responsible for designing the runway replacements, we'll also just at a high level introduce those 10 surface models that represent each of the runways. So from among our class objectives, in addition to introducing our data set within our design environment, this first stop in Civil 3D is going to be number one out of multiple environments, where we walk through the how for visualizing and assessing surfaces for our airport runway replacement project.

So we're starting out with a drawing today of our airport data set in Civil 3D, like I said a minute ago. And we can see that the airport consists of two crossing runways. And we also just have one terminal for our airport. And in our drawing, we have quite a bit of line work already in place to reflect things like the various jetway areas and the parking locations for the planes when they arrive at the jetways or depart from them.

We also have the line work for the runways themselves. And we have things like the airfield lights. We also have all these guidelines for the aircraft as they're making their way to and from the terminal with respect to the runways.

And while this line work is of use and it's necessary for documentation of our project, we need to additionally characterize things like the existing ground, so that we can continue onward with our design for our runway replacements and model those new runway surfaces. So I'm showing now a listing of measured topographic survey points that were collected, say, out in the field and provided directly to us by a surveyor in the form of a standalone CSV file.

And we're going to incorporate those points into our drawing and generate that first 10 surface for existing ground. So we're going to start this process by importing the points from the CSV file. So we'll navigate to and select the CSV file where the points happen to be in the format of point number, and then easting, and then northing, z elevation, and then a description.

So we're just making that PE and ZD selection there and verifying that it looks good. And we're going to then click OK soon after. And notice that we now have a collection of 514 points in our drawing. What we're going to do next is create a point group that's associated with those survey points.

First, we're going to need to actually define that point group. And I'm just going to name the point group topo here. And we'll just leave intact the default point styles and the labeling for our point group.

We can see now that we've created this topo point group. We next need to populate the group with the measured survey points that we read in earlier from that CSV file. So we'll enter into the properties. And we'll navigate over to the Include tab.

And we're going to actually make a graphical selection of the points within our drawing that we just finished importing. So here we go with that selection. And once we make it, we'll just be a little bit careful here because of the nature of this selection to just visually verify and make sure that we've selected what we've intended to select.

So that's looking pretty good. We now have those 514 points. And we're going to use them to populate our topo point group. And now that our point group is populated, we're ready to take the next step. And we'll create a new surface for our drawing that, again, is characterizing the existing ground.

And so I'm just going to call this surface-- I'll just give it a name of EG for existing ground. And we'll go ahead and leave in the default styles in place for like the surface definition, and the render material, and things like that. So we're now going to add that point group to our surface.

So we'll go down to the surface definition, go to those point groups. And we'll go ahead and select the topo point group that we created earlier. And we'll click OK. And now we have this tin surface. That is the characterization of the existing ground based on that CSV file of topographic survey measurements that were provided to us.

So a focus for today is going to be working with that existing ground, for sure. But in addition, we're going to be showcasing some of the ways that we can work with services that are associated with design, or proposed, or as-built conditions. And so what I'm highlighting now are these special entities in Civil 3D, like corridors. Or there's things like grading objects that were developed for each of the runways and from which corresponding 10 surfaces were created.

So the 10 surfaces that we're going to be focusing on today are the existing ground and then those two 10 surfaces for the runways themselves. Coming back to our overview of surface modeling workflows covered today, we're going to continue along that top row of primarily desktop-based workflows.

And we're going to leverage the linework and the surface modeling efforts from our first demo, where as civil engineers we took in a file of topographic survey points measured out in the field. And we created a 10 model of the existing ground and also those 10 surfaces for the two runways.

We'll now switch hats. And we're going to put on our hat as a GIS professional, say, a GIS analyst. And we're going to use ArcGIS Pro to build up a 3D scene that includes not only the existing ground and the runway surfaces from Civil 3D, but also allows us to visualize and assess our project site with added context from the surrounding built and natural environment.

In ArcGIS Pro, there are several ways to model surfaces and work with them. And two that we're going to highlight today are terrain data sets and raster layers. Now, I'm going to throw some definitions at you here. A terrain data set is a multi-resolution 10-based surface model that's built up typically from measurements, but then can be stored as features in a geodatabase.

Now in other words, terrain data sets uphold the quality of design 10 surfaces originating in Civil 3D for example. And additionally, they allow for surface models to synergize with other design and GIS entities all within that ArcGIS Pro environment. Now, as a second definition, that raster layer, it consists of a matrix of cells or just pixels that are organized into a grid, where each one of those cells contains a value representing information, like we're going to be working with elevation a lot today for our surfaces.

And these raster layers are more useful for qualitative visualizations, as we'll show later, and for things like publishing surface models as part of, say, web scenes for online viewing by other project stakeholders. Now, in a moment we're going to show some recent enhancements that make convenient the generation of these two types of surface representations, terrain data sets, raster layers, through streamlined processing of Civil 3D 10 surfaces.

So in ArcGIS Pro, collections of surfaces can be visualized and assessed in the form of an improved or an integrated or composite definition of ground across the project site. So you have this one amalgamated surface that's visualized. And it can be arranged and viewed in conjunction with other design files as part of our GIS workflows.

So for the second demo that we're about to get into, we're acting, again, as that GIS analyst who is responsible for creating a 3D scene that includes that integrated or composite set of surfaces for our runway replacement project. And it's in context with the nearby built and natural components. So for this demo, we're going to be carrying out in ArcGIS Pro.

It's going to constitute the second of the three environments where we'll be working with these surface models today. And we're going to emphasize, like I said, some of those advances that are going to be made available simultaneous to the release of ArcGIS Pro 3.2 for things like the reading and streamlined processing of 10 surfaces originating from Civil 3D to generate these equally accurate, precise terrain data sets, as well as things like raster layers for visualization.

So it's these new capabilities in ArcGIS Pro that are fostering the collaboration between civil engineers and GIS analysts, where say the necessary effort has been reduced for a GIS professional to leverage all of that surface data and all that design work that a civil engineer has worked up in a Civil 3D file.

So I'm showing here the completed 3D scene of our project site for the airport, where we've brought together various design files. Included among those is the design file [AUDIO OUT] 3D that was created by the civil engineer and was provided to us. And it contains things like the linework, like the airfield lights, and the various tarmac and runway line components.

And in addition, it also includes, of course, the surfaces for things like our existing ground and our two runways. We've also incorporated a CAD drawing of the airport terminal itself. And in addition to the terminal, we've also included a BIM or a Revit model of the airport access infrastructure that leads up to the terminal entrances coming back to the overall view of the scene.

Now, turning attention to our surfaces, a big focus, we've included terrain data sets for each of the runways of our existing ground and for the runways. And we also have raster layers for the runways and the existing ground in addition. And we've made use of the variety of symbology options that are available for use with these terrain data sets.

Now, turning to the runways we see that we have what's called band plots that allow us to visually assess the change in elevation across the lengths of our runways. And we have that same type of band plot assigned both for runway two and for runway one, as shown here. Now, turning our attention for a moment to the existing ground, we see that we selected a contour-based approach for visualizing the various gradations of the ground surface across the project site.

Turning still our attention to just a partially completed scene for our airport project site, we've included in this partially completed scene several of the CAD and the BIM file assets that provide that context to our project that we're working with. But we've also included the runway one and the existing ground terrain data sets and raster layers.

But we're going to go through now an example, where we focus on the surface data for runway two and how to bring it in. One approach is to incorporate the surface data through a series of geoprocessing tools. And we can start with create terrain, where you need to specify things like an input feature data set and various triangulation options that effectively provide the housing for the terrain data set for just that one surface.

Now, having established that data container, so to speak, you need to then call add terrain pyramid level. And that requires specifying the input terrain. And in addition to the input terrain, you also need to specify a parameter associated with the Z tolerance that's associated with achieving the desired scale-dependent resolution that gets rendered.

You next need to add a call to what's called add feature class to terrain. And what this geoprocessing tool does is it allows you to specify-- you need to specify the input terrain. But then you need to in addition specify features that correspond to each of the surface components of interest, where those would need to be recognized in your Pro environment from the Civil 3D drawing, and then processed into feature classes right within ArcGIS Pro.

Now, turning our attention to the Catalog pane, let's expand the entry for the Civil 3D drawing that's been incorporated into our project here. And I'm showing here that part of the development efforts for ArcGIS Pro 3.2 have been to expand the types of surface components that we recognize, like the borders, and the boundaries, and the points that are coming from a Civil 3D drawing for the surfaces.

And what we've done is we've leveraged that expanded recognition to streamline the processing of generating things like terrain data sets and still other surface entities. In other words, we've encapsulated that series of geoprocessing calls into one script that will be provided simultaneous to ArcGIS Pro 3.2, where you just select the Civil 3D drawing of interest that contains the 10 surfaces that you want to work with.

For us that's the Civil 3D drawing that was provided to us by the civil engineer. And we can see the script tool is now processing that Civil 3D drawing to identify which 10 surfaces it contains. Now, from there, once the processing is completed and the surfaces have been recognized, you can select a 10 surface of interest that you'll work with.

For our example, we're going to select the 10 surface for runway two. And notice also that if a coordinate system has been assigned to the drawing, it's recognized as well. Next, you'll need to specify the geodatabase that you want to work with. And for us that's going to be our airport geodatabase.

Next, you need to supply a name for the terrain data set that's going to be created. And for us, after a little bit of deliberation here, we'll decide to just keep it simple. And we'll supply the name runway two. In addition, an option is available to generate a raster layer that corresponds to the Civil 3D 10 surface of interest. And that facilitates the preparation of web scenes for publishing to ArcGIS Online, where we'll go through examples of that preparation as part of our next demo.

Now, what we'll do next is we'll return to the catalog pane. And we're going to inspect our geodatabase. And what we can see upon inspection is that the runway two content was generated, including a terrain data set that was built up based on those break lines, and the borders, and the boundaries, and the points of that surface.

And in addition, we also have a raster layer that was created for runway two. And that was all just one shot, one call to that script tool. So as a next step what we can do is just add the terrain data set to our scene in the usual way. And it's just the standard terrain data set at this point.

So we have access to all of the layer options, like symbolizing the train data set to our desired purposes. And in fact, let's take a moment. And we'll showcase the variety of symbolization options that we have at our disposal. This includes things like the borders of the surface and that band plot that we've assigned here to accentuate the changes of the runway elevation along its length.

And there are still other options, like the contours in that scheme we use for symbolizing the existing ground. Now, turning to the raster layer that was generated, we'll also add that to our scene for runway two. And we'll use that raster layer to go ahead and finalize the build up of that composite or integral definition of ground, where a unique advantage of visualizing these ground surfaces in ArcGIS Pro is that things like the existing ground and the runway one and two surfaces are all amalgamated.

They're all integrated, so that in terms of visualization they're viewed as one integrated surface, even though behind the scenes that scene is drawing upon surface data that was distinct as originating in Civil 3D. Exploring further how the surfaces are composited or integrated, I'm just playing with here the order of our definition of ground, so that runway two is on top, followed by runway two and the existing ground.

And you can see that our scene regenerates. And the order of the surfaces is now such that raster one is given that top prioritization followed by raster two in the existing ground. So I'll switch that back to our original configuration. But again, it just demonstrates that integrated definition of ground as visualized, as rendered, it respects the ordering of the layers that arrange under elevation surfaces and the ground entries within your scene contents pane.

Next turn our attention to the terrain data sets that we've included in our scene. And we'll just select the data set for the existing ground. And let's talk about a moment here why these are so powerful for including in our 3D scenes as part of our GIS workflows. So we can see that the terrain data set includes all of the mass points, the 10 surface itself, and even the raster representation.

And what's so valuable here is that if you wanted to do something, like export out the points of the terrain data set and publish those to an ArcGIS Enterprise environment for example, well, then these points would uphold the accuracy associated with their originating design environment, say Civil 3D.

So any project team member, like a civil engineer or another GIS analyst, they could rest assured that they're not only drawing upon this highly precise, highly accurate surface data, but also the data, it gets centralized when you use that approach. And it allows for trust to come into play here for operating on just an authoritative key surface model component for carrying out workflows that involve surface modeling.

So we're going to demo that centralized approach a little bit later today. And so there you have it. A GIS analyst using these recent advances in ArcGIS Pro are better equipped than ever before to bring together disparate data sources, including surfaces, for collaboration with civil engineers and for preparing scenes to be visualized by other project stakeholders.

Returning again to our overview of surface modeling workflows that we're covering today, we're going to continue still further along that top row. And this time we're headed all the way to the right. And for this portion of the class, we're going to go beyond desktop workflows. And we're going to enter into a workflow that has a web component.

Nonetheless, we are continuing to build and integrate and stack on top of that effort for the line work, and the existing ground, and the runway surfaces that originated and was created by our civil engineer in Civil 3D, as well as that 3D scene that we just went through in detail in ArcGIS Pro by our GIS analyst that additionally brought together CAD and BIM assets, along with GIS data, and the terrain data sets and the raster layers, so that we could view our project site and surfaces in context.

Having completed that scene in ArcGIS Pro in our previous demo, let's say we're now facing a requirement to create and publish a web scene, so that a project stakeholder, say an owner for example, can visualize our project while the project is in the midst of, say, the construction phase or perhaps at the point of handing off the as-built data after construction is completed.

By creating this web scene, we can disseminate rich, interactive 3D environments to broader audiences for viewing through web browsers. And so we can inform our project stakeholder without the need for them to have to learn and navigate our desktop design and GIS tools.

So in our next demo that's coming up, while continuing to wear our GIS analyst hat, we're going to spend some time-- and I'm not shying away from it. It's going to be time in ArcGIS Pro. And I'm going to provide tips and tricks for preparing the various scene components for publishing out to a web scene.

We'll then publish that web scene to ArcGIS Online. And we'll carry out some additional preparations. Or I'll just show you options that are available, so that our project stakeholder can breeze through our project site and interact with it and interact with all the content, like the runway surfaces, in the broader context and all from within just an ordinary web browser.

So in line with our class objectives, this is going to be the third of our three environments, which we're able to visualize and assess surfaces for our project site. So we're going to begin this demo back in ArcGIS Pro looking at our completed desktop scene. And let's recap the layers that we included.

So we have these direct read layers corresponding to CAD data for the linework, as well as CAD data for the terminal building itself. And then we have a direct read BIM layer of that Revit model for the terminal access structure. We also have these terrain data sets for our runways and existing ground. And we also have the raster layers.

Let's now temporarily visit a completed scene of our same project site. But I've reorganized it and renamed the layers as part of our preparations for publishing out to a web scene in ArcGIS Online. And if we start with some of our design file assets, I've reorganized them into group layers of all the CAD content, which are all now expressed as feature classes.

And I've chosen to break out individual components of the CAD line work into individual feature layers. Turning to our surface model components, we have replaced our terrain data sets with raster layers because we need to for publishing out to online. And we'll walk through symbolizing the runway surfaces later in this demo.

Turning now to a partially prepared scene, I'm going to walk through examples and highlight key steps needed to prepare the scene, so that it's publish-ready. And we're going to begin with focusing on some of the CAD content. The approach I'm about to show you for preparing a CAD layer for publishing to ArcGIS Online is just one of many possible approaches, particularly with respect to how I've handled the symbolization.

So let's get into it. Let's go through our example of preparing some CAD-based data. And we're going to focus in on the marking areas out at the runways' ends. So I've returned temporarily to our completed desktop scene. And I've expanded that CAD layer associated with the marking area.

We can see that there are multiple symbology schemes applied within that layer. So go ahead and copy that layer and paste it from our desktop scene into our preparation scene. And we're going to start the processing of isolating both the desired content and the symbology for this directory CAD layer.

So what we're going to do first is issue a definition query. And that's going to allow us to just isolate the marking into area components. So here we'll specify the CAD layer. We'll also include the color assigned to that CAD layer. So we achieve the desired level of isolation. And we can see within our rendered scene that now the marking end areas are displayed.

As a next step, we're going to modify the symbology for this directory CAD layer. And I'm just going to simplify the symbolization, so that it's just drawing upon a single value rather than having those multiple schemes for symbolizing the content. But I'm going to bring back that yellow color that was associated with the marking end area.

And we can see we have those marking end areas showing up now as yellow. Next, I'm going to just temporarily update the name of the feature layer just to keep track of the content that's currently reflected in our preparation scene. We're now going to need to convert that CAD layer over to a feature class that's stored in our geodatabase.

And we'll use export features geoprocessing tool to do it. So I'll select that directory CAD layer that we just temporarily renamed. And note that our definition query is held up here. And we'll just leave the default naming for the output feature class in place for just a moment.

So go ahead and run that export features geoprocessing tool. And we can see over in the Contents pane we now have a new feature layer that's added to our scene, where that new feature layer is just an ordinary GIS feature layer. And it consists only of the yellow marking end area polygons. So we'll next go ahead and update the naming for that newly created feature layer.

And just make it clear that it contains the marking end area content. And we'll tuck that feature layer into the group layer that contains all of the points, and the lines, and the polygons for the tarmac. We're going to next enter the layer properties. And we'll make sure that this feature layer is vertically positioned with respect to the ground.

And we're going to also set the symbology so that it renders in proportion to the scene units, not with respect to raw pixels or points. So you would need to carry out a similar process for any other of these directory CAD layers that you wanted to prepare for publishing to a web scene. But let's now turn our focus to the surfaces and to our runways.

And we're going to make copies of our raster layers that contribute to our ground definition. And notice that the copies, they get placed in the 2D layer section of our contents. So we'll go and visit the symbolization for these raster layers that we've just copied and pasted in. And we'll select a band plot that's similar to the band plots that we assigned back over previously in our desktop scene for the runways.

And we can see that the symbology is now applied. We'll just repeat that same process for the next runway. And we'll copy and paste it into our scene, navigate over to the symbology pane, apply that symbology that's comparable back to what we were happy with over in our desktop scene. And note it's not exactly the same symbology because we're working on raster layers.

Whereas, in our desktop scene, we were working on terrain data sets. Next we're going to inspect the properties of our scene overall. And we're just going to go ahead and switch our coordinate system over to the one that's going to end up being used in our web scene anyway, namely the WGS 84 Web Mercator. So notice the scene rerenders to reflect that change in the coordinate system.

So let's now navigate to the share ribbon. And let's click the web scene. We're ready to publish our scene to the web. And it includes the feature layers for the tarmac, the terminal, the BIM layer for the terminal access, the symbolized raster layers for the runway, and that composite definition of ground.

So upon clicking the Share button, the scene is analyzed to make sure that we have all the layers present either in the geodatabase or that we're using direct read BIM layers-- that's OK-- and that we're not violating any symbology requirements for publishing to ArcGIS Online. Now, once the analysis is carried out and the publishing steps are complete, we're ready to navigate over to our web scene and open it in a scene viewer right from within a web browser.

Now as the scene loads, just turn your attention to the legend in the upper right. And we can see that the runway surfaces and the regrouped, renamed tarmac components, and the group layers, and the terminal components themselves, and the terminal access, they're all present. They've all made it up to this web scene.

And in addition, we have options provided for you to specify various types of Esri base maps. So we can select from any number of ways to visualize that backdrop for our web scene and even select from different types of day if we want to that reflect the level of sunlight relative to the physical project location. We also have analysis tools available for you to measure things, like the lengths between two points of interest.

Now, turning back to the layers in our web scene, if after publishing the scene from ArcGIS Pro you still have the need to do things like go back and reorder the composite or integrated definition of ground so that you get the layering ordered as you see fit or even inspect any one of the layer styles and modify them to an alternative that you desire for your web scene, you have those options available.

Another feature that we have that's available for these web scenes into ArcGIS Online is the ability to define what's called slides. And I've already set up several here, where these can be really valuable for enhancing the experience of project stakeholders, so that they can progress through these smooth views that traverse across the project site.

For example, I've set these up here to where it's almost like we're simulating the approach of a plane going down and descending toward the runway and making its way over to the jetway at the terminal, which through these very simple passive execution it adds to the immersiveness of interacting with this web scene. And it's this progression of views, for example, that allows stakeholders to see how these runway surfaces fit in within the context of all the other built-in natural scene components at their current state of completion.

Having played the roles of civil engineer and GIS analyst, we've now seen how to create models of existing ground surfaces and proposed or even as-built scenes for our airport data set, so we're better equipped to visualize and assess them in our design drawings and desktop scenes in ArcGIS Pro and then web scenes in ArcGIS Online. So we're now going to shift our focus a bit. And we're going to highlight how the surface modeling workflows extend across Civil 3D and ArcGIS and can draw upon one centralized system of record.

And it helps to fuel collaboration between team members such as groups of civil engineers and even cross-team collaborations, such as those between civil engineers and GIS analysts. So revisiting our overview of the surface modeling workflows that we've focused on today, and having gone through the various workflows along the top row, we're now going to give focus to workflows that include that traversal along the bottom portions of our diagram.

Namely, consider the workflow we demonstrated earlier for characterizing the existing ground surface across our project site. And recall that the field professional, like the surveyor, they went out to the site. They carried out the topographic survey. But in contrast to our first demo from earlier today, the field measurements are not getting stored in a standalone file that's provided directly to the civil engineer.

Rather the surveyor is going to use an app, like ArcGIS Field Maps for example, and then through ArcGIS feature services, publish and store those field measurements as hosted feature layer in the organization's ArcGIS Enterprise environment. Likewise, the civil engineer is going to use feature services directly from within Civil 3D to transact on the stored field measurements and bring them into their design environment for use in building up a 10 model to characterize the existing ground surface.

And further, the civil engineer can go on to leverage these feature services in a two-way manner, where key surface model components of any 10 surface of interest can be published and then transacted upon in the ArcGIS Enterprise environment by other professionals, like civil engineers on the team and GIS analysts in the organization.

So for this demo, we're going to return to Civil 3D. And we're going to place back on our civil engineering hat. And we're going to focus on building up a 10 surface model that characterizes the existing ground for our airport project site.

And for this workflow, we're going to leverage Esri's ArcGIS for AutoCAD. Now, one way to describe it is as a free plugin that installs on top of AutoCAD and tools like Civil 3D. And it allows for CAD professionals to enrich their design drawings with GIS. Another way to describe it is that it geospatially enables AEC workflows through two-way participation in one system of record, where design professionals are not just consuming GIS data in their desktop applications.