This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. Making organic or unusual shapes in ArcGIS CityEngine can be difficult. This makes it sometimes less capable than say SketchUp for creating ‘iconic’ or ‘hero’ buildings. However, with some imagination and some mathematical skills you can get creative! Here you see a building rule (for hero/iconics) that uses some simple translate functions to move and/or modify scope of a buildings floors. Capture here is in real time, I am using a slider to interact with some attributes.  ..read more

This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. ArcGIS CityEngine masterplanning project continued: a focus on a podium/tower typology rule here. Note how many aspects are interactive, including response shades for windows (which only generate when orientated to a specific direction!). The trick with rules is choosing good defaults and then giving the end user choice over a focused set of attributes. Often setbacks, windows, and vegetation create the biggest visual impact. And of course because this is #CityEngine and procedural modelling all of this comes ..read more

This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. ArcGIS CityEngine masterplanning demo project making progress! Adding details like windows and some vegetation transforms your scenarios to something a little more realistic. Geometry can still be changed or modified based on some attributes to give it a more ‘designed’ feel whilst maintaining performance and the useful things like reporting metrics! With the live dashboards in your view (subject to your monitor space) you can sit in front of stakeholders tweaking attributes and getting an idea ..read more

This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. ArcGIS CityEngine masterplanning demo project coming along with simplistic mass models for residential and tower blocks. Geometry can be changed or modified based on some attributes to give it a more ‘designed’ feel whilst maintaining performance and the useful things like reporting metrics! I hope to add some more realistic elements to these models so it will look nice for export to #twinmotion Geodesign ..read more

This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. Early screenshot of a new ArcGIS CityEngine city masterplanning demo project (Arabian Gulf location) I’ve been working on for GD3D® . Rules to describe housing (simple to start with), industrial (check out my solar farm) and agricultural so far. In addition, I am using the excellent ‘Complete Streets Rule’ by David Wasserman here as you can hit the ground running and streets (let’s be honest) are hard to do well from scratch! As you can see we have built in metrics starting with GFA but hopefully we’ll have mo ..read more

My ArcGIS CityEngine ‘Modern Home 203/Wareham’ put through a quick render in the (as always) excellent Twinmotion. For desktop rendering and integration with CityEngine. Twinmotion is really a good choice and there is a pathway/workflow to take this TM scene into Unreal Engine as well!  ..read more

Single-Family Attached dwelling types procedurally generated in #ArcGIS #CityEngine with corner lot correction built-in (for those using the streetnetwork tool) adding some metrics to this as well! As always the “devil is in the detail” or in this case the underlying data/geometry and workflows. Coming soon a library of dwelling rules built from guidance/inspiration in the “Planning and Urban Design Standards” (Student Edition) book from the American Planning Association (work in progress as always!). I’ve done some UK housing stock as well don’t worry ..read more

This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. Well since some people seemed interested in my previous #ArcGIS #CityEngine posts. I thought I would continue! This time let us look at metrics: #planning projects often, before getting to detailed designs, want an understanding of capacity (in terms of floor areas / #GFA) and some idea of simple massing. #CityEngine really excels at this and what’s nice is that this is far easier to implement than the more detailed models (like my previous posts)! So how do we start? We ..read more

This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. Lots of people talk about digitaltwins for cities (and more often than not focus on 3D City Information Model creation), but don’t forget that cities are supported by surrounding rural areas/hinterland! With data coming from the Environment Agency’s National LiDAR programme automated tools for geospatial software like ArcGISPro allow us to quickly create 3D building models of rural areas. In many ways I think that these tools, although often designed for cities, work ..read more

This is a post that I did for LinkedIn that I have copied here for others to view…. Well, I am not finished yet but you can see I’ve coded in details to the porch and added a stone platform/plinth to the #CityEngine generated Wareham/Modern Home 203 Sears catalogue home. When you’ve got into CityEngine you will want to do more details (in geometric terms) and adding textures. This does rely on an understanding of all your textured geometries ‘scope’ and how texturing/materials work (see my previous posts for reference to ‘scope’). Some issues here is that placing realistic textures ..read more