Esri Complete Street Rule Discussion-Feedback?

[DavidWasserman]

Hi All,

My name is David Wasserman, the urban planner/programmer that wrote Complete_Street.cga that is featured in the Complete Street Example. I was hoping that if anyone had any comments on the rule or suggestions for changes/features/bug fixes I wanted to provide a forum for that on Geonet. So say what ever comes to your mind, but I would prefer constructive feedback. This could be a forum where everyone could provide input, discussion, and hopefully create a better rule. If you want to discuss transportation/parking/urban planning rules generally for CityEngine consider hitting this thread first.

I have attached some example renderings for those unfamiliar with the rule and its capabilities. In addition, there is now documentation for the rule available for download here. It is still pretty rough, so feedback is appreciated. In addition to the documentation, there is a new version of the rule posted about here, feedback would be appreciated.

In addition, this is also an ok forum if you are having problems with the rule. If you comment on here, I get buzzed. In the numbered section below I will recount a short summary of problems discussed in this thread.

Kind Regards,
David Wasserman

PS: If you  do anything with the rule or want to share a rendering you made (a nice one), feel free to share your images/experience.

Discovery 1: Webscene issues that were worked out pretty easily, small webscenes work typically better.

Discovery 2: Street rule is not compatible with CE 2013. Its Crosswalks Depend on 2014 UVSpace options, and there is not an ESRI.lib file for 2013. Rule is designed for and works best with the most recent version of CE (2014).
Discovery 3: For road segments to snap, you must make sure they are apart of the same layer. Merge layers if you have snapping problems.

Discovery 4: Short road segments are hard for the street rule to handle at times. A few work around with short segments include: Change crosswalks and stop types to none, making the CrosswalkBegin/End attributes a negative number, manipulating nodes to be longer, or deleting unnecessary nodes to create longer street segments (use simplify graph tool) (Thanks Steve).

Discovery 5: A discussion about curb extensions  and how to make them albeit an unorthodox way is both below and on this thread.

Discovery 6: Bridges have a minimum height requirement to generate (structure just does not make sense below a certain height). Also if you want Piers to appear regardless of Occlusion settings use On, Show All Piers. If it still does not work try: Making a new segment to test the rule one, restarting CE, or re-importing the road layer and starting again.

Discovery 7: When cropping or re-sizing your aerial for your CE project chances are you will need to georeference the image to your geography or another aerial. Georeferencing an aerial in ArcMAP will take on the ArcMAP scene projection but that is not enough. Be sure to use the "Project Raster" in the Toolbox and this will ensure proper scale and placement for your CE scene.

Discovery 8: Mapped Attributes: IF you map the streetWidth or sidewalk street parameters, and you want to adjust them after the fact you must change both the mapped object attribute AND the shape parameter. See responses below for details.

Discovery 9: Handles - Recent editions to the rule in 2017 have started to support handles for traffic lights and streetlights for more custom edits that were typically reserved for photoshop. If you have any suggestions for handles please add a comment. 

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Notice: 1: There is a 2015 Version of the Complete Street rule. There was a bug in the street rule that did not make it work in 2015, and in this version of the rule the bug is fixed. It should work in 2014 as well as 2015 versions of CE.

[Luiz_AmadeuCoutinho]

Hi David

Congratulations . Great work.

I tried export the Scene (Hi Resolution - 64bits) to WebScene in Medium Quality (textures). The 3ws file have 159mb.

In localhost I tried open file, but the browser crash in final extract operation. I used Firefox and Mozilla.

I dont know if a problem is my computer or the file size.

[DavidWasserman]

Hi Luis,

This might be a problem outside the scope of the street rule itself.

Try making a smaller selection for now? 

See if you can do a web scene with the street rule with a small grown street in a new scene (like 15 segments tops).

Let me know how it goes.
We would love to see an example web scene.

David

[Luiz_AmadeuCoutinho]

Hi David

This is your project online. The file have 89mb and the Web Scene was exported in Low Resolution. Great job. My next step will be apply your Rules in my project.

CityEngine Web Viewer

[DavidWasserman]

Hi Luiz,

This is great! Thanks for sharing. It took  a while to download, but it was worth it. Let us know how using it your project works out. Look forward to seeing the street rule in action.

David

[SteveRhyne]

Hi David. I was happy to see a more robust Complete Street rule. However, I'm running into problems that I cannot seem to solve. I opened the 32-bit or 64-bit projects and I get several "Unknown Asset" boxes in my scene that seem to reference the streets. The terrain, aerial, buildings, and sidewalks all show up fine. Any advice you have would be great. Thanks.

[DavidWasserman]

Hi Steve,

Thank you Steve!

This looks like a directory issue, and I have seen it before. Judging by the partial rotations of each box this is very likely the tree library...The street rule tries to refer to the ESRI.lib tree rule and its related assets. If that connection cannot be established for some reason then the rule cannot insert them.

Relevant code:

#####################

#Tree.Generateed Rules #

#####################

import Tree : "/ESRI.lib/rules/Plants/Plant_Loader.cga"

# Taken from ESRI.lib and uses its assets. Keep this in mind when using rule.

Is there anything different about your ESRI.lib folder/files? Did you make any changes?

Do what happens with things like planters and other assets that are in the complete streets assets folder? (In bike lane buffer type go to planters, and make sure the buffer width is >0).

For now turn the tree1 Percentage attribute down to 0 so you can look around the scene for other issues. If the boxes go away then it is definitely the trees. (Also make sure that Tree2 is set to none...I forgot about that.)

Kind Regards,
David

[SteveRhyne]

Hi David. I didn't make any changes. I extracted the zip file and opened the 32-bit scene files. Selecting the boxes and looking at the problems window I see the error is related to the trees. I changed the percentage attribute to 0 but it didn't change. When referring to the ESRI.lib folder/files are you talking about the project folders in the navigator window? Thanks for your help. 

[DavidWasserman]

Hi Steve,

Yes I am . Specifically here are a few screen shots of what I am talking about.

The ESRI.lib Project folder Directory I am referring to is this one. The rule and the path are highlighted. This rule grabs assets that are local to the ESRI.lib folder. 

However, looking at the image you are using CE 2013. The rule was developed for 2014 and thus operates under the assumption that the ESRI.lib folder is available. Here is the LumenRT planting rule and library I believe on ArcGIS online...however I am not sure if this is compatible with the existing rule.

Steve we are going to investigate more on this end. Can you confirm that you are using CE 2013.1 and that you have no Esri.lib Folder?

Kind Regards,
David

[DavidWasserman]

Hi Steve,

I have some bad news.

CE is not forward compatible. Looking at the code in my rule and the experience the CE team has had with rule transitions, I know for a fact that my street rule exploits features that did not exist  in 2013. It is possible that the tree library might work, but also looking at your image the street segments (most of the rules code applies to these segments) do not exist. I think I know why the issue exists for both. The 2014 Complete_Street.CGA street rule utilizes aspects of UVSpace for crosswalks that did not exist before CE 2014, and in addition the ESRI.lib folder I was told does not exist in CE 2013. It might be possible to get the trees back for sidewalks, but I am not sure the code is compatible for the street segments. This issue alone makes me believe this rule cannot be used with CE 2013.

Kind Regards,
David