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Hi Matt, Yes it is important, the client will tell us that for each kind of land use there is a specific FAR, for this specific project they divided all the zone into these little blocks and call them F1, F2, G1, G2, etc. according to land uses (we had to comply with this layout, which of course is often not the case as in other cases we can just create our own street and block pattern by ourselves). Then they give us a specific FAR + a percentage of the block which has to be developed (for instance 40% of the parcel), and a minimum area which has to be developed as "one piece" (as opposed to developing plots here and there which would create some new sprawl). Since they give us the FAR and a percentage of the block to develop, we can infer from that the number of floors each building should have. But that's not the only way to proceed, many times clients will give us GFA's for each type of land use for the whole project + each specific amenity (theater, tourist center...) they want us to develop, sometimes with a specific number of floors but not always (for instance, they will say: the new development will need to have so many squarefootage of retail, residential and office use, and they will also give us a FAR but without more information). Anyway I think that in all the projects I have seen or done, rules were turning around these variables, even if all of them were not always given since some can be inferred from the other ones: - FAR - Number of floors/height - GFA - % of block that has to be developed Philippe A question in between : How relevent are GFA and FAR calculations in such a masterplan of yours ? We've been in contact with multiple offices and city administrations which do similar work with CE, so I assume it's also very important for you. Since the FAR value is GFA / parcel area .. What's such a reference 'parcel' in the image you have posted ? Per 'little block' I see or over the whole project ? Let me know .. M.
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01-26-2013
08:18 PM
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Hi Matt, Thanks for your answer, I can see that architecture leads to many paths! 😄 (I'm actually an urban planner, even if I do more urban design now). Well, I would like to use City Engine to produce 3D masterplans, so no need to be very detailed as I don't need it for some detailed site plan, but I think it would be a great tool to explore different designs easily and speed up the drafting process. I upload an illustration plan which is similar to what I would like to achieve: For this kind of project, my usual workflow would be: - Print the available CAD data (contour lines, existing buildings and roads, land use...) and draw by hand some plan on it - Draw the buildings, new roads, location of the trees on roads with trees, open space and any bike paths and pedestrian paths with AutoCAD - Export to Illustrator and then Photoshop to add colors, trees for forest with brush tool, shadows, water, underlying satellite image, etc. My model in AutoCAD is usually not georeferenced, but I guess I could georeference it when importing to CE Engine if ArcGIS files are involved. I think it would be great if I could just draw some centerlines for the roads on AutoCAD, then apply some rule to define their width and the number of lanes + apply a texture (by the way I have looked at the Modern Streets' rule file and I have been able to modify the number of lanes and their width but not the overall width of the street :confused:, i know you can drag the street directly to make it wider but I guess there must be a parameter in the rule to enter a precise number?). After that, I would like to create blocks like the ones in the attached pictures, plus some additional buildings like the ones on the left side (villas in the forest), I don't know if this kind of development with a little path connecting it to the sidewalk could be defined by a rule though?), then define open spaces areas (in most of the blocks, open spaces areas = block outline minus buildings minus paths and sidewalks) and add bike paths as well plus features such as football field (not sure how to color it in City Engine though). So basically, I would just have the AutoCAD file with my roads and paths centerlines plus some obstacle map for lakes, rivers, etc. and some Sketchup models for a few landmark buildings, and I would use rules to design the rest. I guess that once you know how to do it it's not so hard but I think that right now it's still a bit difficult for me;) I would be grateful for any help/advice you could give me! Thank you, Philippe PS I have seen the workflows and the tutorials and they are already helpful I must say, but I need to study them in detail. Same for the Help inside City Engine, which also has a lot of info!
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01-16-2013
03:44 AM
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Thanks Matt, Yes it's good to know that you're moving in this direction, looking forward to seeing all the future developments of City Engine! Philippe
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01-16-2013
03:12 AM
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Hi Matthias, Thank you for the link, that's helpful! It could maybe be integrated to City Engine in the future (just a suggestion)! Philippe
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01-16-2013
03:04 AM
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Hello everyone, I have seen in a tutorial that you can import a greyscale height map into City Engine and use it to drive development height in a city. However, I usually have some AutoCAD data (or data under ArcGIS, which I guess would be much easier to deal with, but I hope to get a solution for AutoCAD too) with some contour lines (which I can know the height of). I don't know how to use these lines to create a greyscale height map in City Engine (or to create some other type of data which could be used as a height map in City Engine). Would someone have a step-by-step workflow for this question for AutoCAD and ArcGIS? That would be very helpful! Thank you very much in advance for your help! (I guess that for ArcGIS I would first need to create a TIN from the contour lines, but I haven't done that for a long time so I'm not sure if this is correct...) Philippe
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01-13-2013
05:05 AM
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Hi Matthias, After trying the tutorials etc. I think that City Engine is a really great piece of software, but I still find the way you create rules etc. to be a bit scary for people like me who are not used to programming. I know that this is the reason why you also created a Grasshopper-like graphic interface, but it is still quite challenging. I was wondering if, for future versions, it would not be possible to add an additional user interface on top of the existing interface, to make common operations easier for users like me. For instance, I could select some roads and click on an icon "street trees" to automatically add trees to these roads (I could remove/edit this attribute in the inspector, just as today). After all, the parameters for street trees are always the same: height, perhaps crown diameter, distance between trees and setback from the curb. I could also easily choose between different kinds of block types (I know that you have different block types in "Styles", I saw that in one of your videos, but I was not able to find these block types) and create buildings after editing them according to my specific requirements. Here again, unless you want to invent some very avant-garde blocks, most of urban blocks obey to a certain typology which boil down to perhaps 5-6 types, same thing for the buildings which compose them: rowhouses, sometimes with a back alley between two rows, semidetached houses, detached houses, courtyard buildings (like in Paris), U-shaped buildings, rectangular buildings, blocks with a big inner courtyard and spaces between each building... This way, we could already have default settings which we could edit by using the sliders in the inspector, while still being able to write some new rules for buildings and blocks which cannot be created by using predefined rules. This is just some idea, but I think that something like that would be really helpful and would make City Engine even more popular!
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01-13-2013
05:00 AM
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Hi Matthias, I have gone through most of the tutorials for City Engine (an amazing program by the way!) but I was wondering if you could upload some specific information about the following: - assign some trees to a street and specify an alignment setback and distance between trees (I know that your example video and tutorial on ""Modern streets" contain trees, but the information regarding this specific operation is "drowned" in the complexity of the scene and it would be great to have a step-by-step "how to" tutorial on how to do that. - same for sidewalks - I was also wondering if it was possible to produce some paths (for example in a forest, or some internal paths in a block), the same way you produce roads? (I don't know if it is possible to specify another texture) - Same for gardens/parks, I'm not sure how to do them (I just need polygons with a grass texture). - I would also appreciate to have a step by step workflow on the different block structures: I have seen on some videos that there seemed to be different styles that we could choose from (L-shaped, U-shaped, etc.) but I can't find where to find these styles in City Engine. Do we need to create them first by ourselves or are they already available? (which would be the best solution for people like me 🙂 - In general, as long as I don't want to produce some detailed rendering of a specific place, the masterplans we do don't need to be extremely detailed. A workflow with City Engine would be something like that: 1. Import roads centerlines from AutoCAD, import obstacle map 2. Import landmarks and other specific 3D features 3. Generate procedural buildings according to preagreed (cf. rule file) block and building parameters 4. Add roads, usually with sidewalks (with trees when required), add trees for forest, add open space areas That's basically it. Most of the masterplans we do look like that (these are just examples): http://www.kpf.com/project.asp?ID=9 http://www.som.com/sites/default/files/beijingbohai.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A5K5AUkq5LU/TefFR-ohNEI/AAAAAAAABg8/LTyXMLfAuoY/s1600/tianjinEcoCity%2Bmaster%2Bplan.jpg As you can see from these pictures, there are not so many different elements actually: only buildings, roads, sidewalks, trees along roads, open space, pedestrian paths, and sometimes bike paths (which are quite similar to pedestrian paths anyway), forests, bodies of water (sea, river, ponds, fountains...) + landmarks (specific building, bridge, road interchange...) Do you think it would be possible to do a detailed, step-by-step workflow on how to produce this specific kind of plan with City Engine? It would be really helpful! Thank you for your answer! Philippe
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01-13-2013
04:48 AM
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Hi Matt, Thank you for your quick reply, I appreciate it! You are right, curve radii (that's better than radius indeed :)) are not very important at the master planning stage, as long as it looks ok, since these things are calculated precisely anyway at a later stage by transportation engineers. I'm in the middle of your second tutorial right now, that's great and I look forward to learning more about City Engine. Thank you! Philippe
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01-08-2013
04:41 AM
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Hi Joanne, Thank you very much for your answer, it is quite helpful indeed! I will look into the website you mention and spend more time with CityEngine to understand more of its potential, which indeed seems very promising. Thank you ! Best regards, Philippe
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01-06-2013
03:26 PM
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Hi everyone, I am a city planner and urban designer and I am interested in City Engine as I see it as a potential way to speed up our design process and any changes we make to it. My company is located in Taiwan and we work on master plans in Asia where we have to create entirely new cities on a large scale. I have downloaded the City Engine trial version but didn't have too much time to dabble into it yet, I understand that going through all the tutorials etc. might answer my question(s) but I would like to know first if it is worth it or not to delve into this software. Producing a master plan is very time consuming, since, on top of the conceptual thinking concerning the urban form and various functions of the city, you then have to spend many hours drawing on AutoCAD or similar software to add buildings, roads, sidewalks (with appropriate turn radius according to road type), and so on (not even talking about adding zebra crossings, street lamps, trees or traffic lane markings for renderings, which could be nice to have set up automatically instead of adding them "manually" in the 2D or 3D model or later on in Photoshop renderings). It would be also great to only have to design the major roads of the city and, once they have been properly defined, to have blocks and streets automatically created between these roads so that we could focus on the design and not on dumb, repetitive tasks. It seems that AutoCAD Infrastructure modeller for instance can do some of these things, but what really sets City Engine apart is its procedural engine that enables users to specify some type of buildings and "populate" city blocks with it. At the same time, while I can see how great this would be for someone using CE to create an imaginary city for a video game for instance, I am wondering if CE could offer the degree of accuracy and creative freedom needed for real life projects: is it possible to have it for instance respect certain development constraints? Such as following a pattern defined by a few main roads imported from AutoCAD, not creating blocks in areas kept for open space or for historical buildings, etc. Basically, it would be great to be able to import a simple wireline pattern of main roads in City Engine along with the site boundaries and possibly (but not necessarily) a 3d terrain model, assign different road widths, different sidewalk widths and different corner radius to different roads according to different categories (highway - with proper interchanges and access ramps and perhaps toll if possible), artery road, boulevard/avenue, street, alley, pedestrian paths) and specify if they must have bicycle paths or lanes (with correct turn radius and widths for single or double paths) and trees or not (while defining tree distance from the curb edge, distance from tree to tree, and perhaps even choose between a few common tree species) and have CE automatically add all of that. It would also be possible to assign different building types and block types to different zones (residential, commercial...) and add some constraints (for instance, if there is a river, not put any buildings on it and at a certain distance from it). And to easily add some textures to ground surfaces in addition to textures for buildings (I know you can do it for buildings). It would be great if the whole model could then be exported as an accurate 3D model (for instance to use for renderings or as a base for a more detailed site plan) as well as a 2D model only (with only the buildings, roads etc. footprints on the ground, providing it is flat). Let me know what are your thoughts on that! It would be great if any urban designer has already integrated CE in his workflow and was willing to share his thoughts/pictures here. Again, I am not looking for tutorials here on how to do all of that, I just want to know if all or part of it can be done by CE and if it could be a good idea to integrate CE in my workflow. Thank you! Philippe
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01-03-2013
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