3D City: Comparing Designs

Example: 3D City Comparing Designs

Version: 1.0
Date: July 17, 2013
Map templates and workflows are ArcGIS resources that can be used to help create 2D / 3D maps and web map
applications with your GIS data. These templates and workflows can be applied as the foundation to create similar maps.
This example shows how you can compare 2 different building designs with regards to impact on the surrounding
cityscape and important building parameters such as Floor Area Ratio and Gross Floor Area. This example is part of a
series of workflows on 3D City Modeling showing you how to:

Prepare your GIS data for generating 3D city features

Create 3D city features like 3D multipatch building shells and 3D streets from existing GIS data
Maintain 3D multipatch building shells
Design new 3D buildings using procedural rules (this workflow: includes master planning and comparing designs)
Perform 3D City analysis such as shadow and visual impact
Publish 3D CityEngine Web Scenes to ArcGIS Online

Please have a look for the full series on the 3DGIS and CityEngine Resource Centers.
Prerequisites:

ArcGIS 10.1 or ArcGIS 10.2

CityEngine 2012.1
If you dont have a license, go here to get a trial version
Pay attention to user interface information (especially how to navigate) when installing
3D City Analysis project
3D City Creation project

Loading the example:

1.

Load 3D City - Analysis.sxd

Unzip the 3D City Analysis.zip file and load the 3D City - Analysis.sxd in ArcScene.

2.

Here we have the building data that we have been using in our series of workflows on 3D City Modeling.
Building footprints
(Buildings/Building1_Footprints3D)
3D Building models
(Buildings/Building2Shells)
2 Proposed Building Designs
(Proposed/MassModel1_Small and Proposed/MassModel1_Tall)
Compare Visual Impact
We want to compare the visual impact of the small design with the visual impact of the tall design. For this
we have already pre-calculated the visual impact for 1 building (bldg40).
Turn on the CompareDesigns/Bldg40_panels_small layer to see the visual impact on building 40 (turn off
bldg40) for the small design and the CompareDesigns/Bldg40_panels_tall layer for the tall design.

CompareDesigns/Bldg40_panels_small

CompareDesigns/Bldg40_panels_small closeup

CompareDesigns/Bldg40_panels_tall

CompareDesigns/Bldg40_panels_tall closeup

The more red the color, the more residents in building 40 will see of the proposed new building. If you do an
identify on a panel on the building, you can see the actual hits (point to point intervisibility) for each panel,
for each of the design (FREQ_SMALL vs. FREQ_TALL).
To learn how to perform this visual impact analysis, please have a look at the Visibility Analysis part of the
3D City: Analysis project.
3.

Compare Shadow Impact

We want to compare the impact of the shadow of the small design with the impact of the shadow of the tall
design. For this we have already pre-calculated the shadows and the resulting shadowmaps for both
designs.
Turn on the CompareDesigns/Shadows_Small layer to see the shadows for the small design and the
CompareDesigns/Shadows_Tall layer for the tall design.

CompareDesigns/Shadows_Small

CompareDesigns/Shadows_Tall

Straightaway we can visually see that the small design will have far less shadow impact on the green park
area than the tall design on the particular time of day. However this is only a visual analysis. In some cases, it
is necessary to back the analysis up with actual shadow times. For this we can do a so-called shadow analysis
using ArcGIS.
Turn on the CompareDesigns/ ShadowMap_Small layer to see the shadowmap for the small design and the
CompareDesigns/ShadowMap_Tall layer for the tall design. The darker the color the more shadow the park
in this case will get.

CompareDesigns/ ShadowMap_Small

CompareDesigns/ShadowMap_Tall

To learn how to perform this shadow analysis, please have a look at the Shadow Analysis part of the 3D City:
Analysis project.
4.

Load 3DCityDesign.cej in CityEngine

If you didnt do so already, install CityEngine and then import the 3D City Creation project into your
workspace: File -> import -> Project -> existing project into workspace. Search for the 3DCity_Creation.zip
archive file.
The 3D City Creation project comes with 3 scenes:
- a 3D city scene called 3DCity.cej
- a prepared design scene called 3DCityDesign.cej and
- a Master Planning scene called 3DCityMasterPlanning.cej

Please open the 3DCityDesign.cej scene. You should see a scene similar to the one below.

5.

Compare building parameters

The initial scene has the tall design including detailed modeled facades.
Lets turn the facades off for this exercise:
- Select the tall building
- Go the Inspector window (Window->Show Inspector)
- Scroll down to the Generic Modern Facades rule and
- Toggle the Generate Facades parameter to off

We are interested in comparing the Floor Area Ratio (FAR or density) and Gross Floor Area (GFA) of this tall
design with our small design.
To get a report of the building parameters such as FAR and GFA, scroll down in the Inspector to the reports
tab.

Tall design FAR = 14.27 / GFA = 46463

Lets have a look at the numbers for the small design:
- Scroll up in the Inspector and
- Open the 6 - Generic Modern Buildings rule
- Set the Nr of Floor Max parameter to 20

scroll down in the Inspector to the reports tab.

Tall design FAR = 8.07 / GFA = 26276

You can copy and paste these report numbers into a spreadsheet and create a graph to compare these
building parameters for the 2 designs:

Enjoy
The 3D /CityEngine team