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2020 Teaser Tuesday - GIS Improvements - Vectorworks 2020


JuanP

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HOLY COW THIS IS FREAKING EPIC!!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

 

I've gone down the ESRI rabbit hole, downloaded the apps, signed on to their services, yada yada yada.. but then in whatever city I happen to be drawing a site plan for a festival, the data is either trapped in the GIS app or so painful to download piecemeal from the city.gov website, that it's useless.

 

To the team that worked on this, WELL DONE!!!

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This is a real game changer to get all the data of the site. 

 

How does it get the data? Can we connect Vectorworks to wms, wcs and wfs servers?

 

Can we have import options like:

  • downsample LIDAR-data and use it directly to create a site model.
  • Import georeferenced images as texture and map it on a site model.
  • Import LIDAR-data as a pointcloud and use the georeferenced image as colorsource to get a colored point cloud.
Edited by herbieherb
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13 minutes ago, bgoff said:

@herbieherb as we only support imagery, we can link to any WMS server.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

Now I'm going down another rabbit hole of the difference between WMS, WFS, WCS, WMTS and WPS. Could you elaborate on "imagery" vs data (not LIDAR).

 

Also, is this service free or will it be like AutoTURN that wanted me to subscribe for $500/year (so I've never used it)?

 

Edited by Mark Aceto
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@Mark Aceto As far as imagery, As far as I know, satellite or liar imagery, however you could create your own maps in Esri and link to those. As far as I know there is free map content and there are other services that exist that are free you can link. But for a full fledged Esri account with all the bells and whistles, that would require an Esri paid account.

 

 

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46 minutes ago, bgoff said:

@Mark Aceto As far as imagery, As far as I know, satellite or liar imagery, however you could create your own maps in Esri and link to those. As far as I know there is free map content and there are other services that exist that are free you can link. But for a full fledged Esri account with all the bells and whistles, that would require an Esri paid account.

 

 

 

I'm talking about accomplishing what's shown in this webinar that originally aired in 2011:

 

https://www.vectorworks.net/inspiration/industry-webinars/integrating-gis-files-with-site-design-workflows

 

A lot of city gov websites have all of the GIS data I need (for example, Virginia Beach VA) but it gets trapped into ArcGIS 2D imagery (basically a Google Map that shows other data for boxes that I've checked) inside their proprietary software.

 

Honestly, I'll figure out the pricing later. In the meantime, I just need to know if I can get all the data demo'd in that 8-year old webinar into VW 2020.

 

Edited by Mark Aceto
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

The short of it! YES! the main piece here is the ability to set the design layer 0,0 to your geolocated point and have everything lineup and import correctly. As far as GIS functionality for drawing, its only a few simple clicks to perfection!

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35 minutes ago, bgoff said:

The short of it! YES! the main piece here is the ability to set the design layer 0,0 to your geolocated point and have everything lineup and import correctly. As far as GIS functionality for drawing, its only a few simple clicks to perfection!

 

Excellent! Can't wait to try this out! If there are new tutorial videos or webinars in the works, that would be icing on the cake!

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Learning to use GIS has been on my to-do list for a few years.

Excited to see how this new VW GIS feature performs!

 

FYI, QGIS is a 17-year old open source GIS project. It's available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android(beta) and looks to be very capable.

https://www.qgis.org/en/site/

I know ESRI dominates the GSI world. But, I wonder if QGIS might be useful to un-trap some of the resources in ESRI-world and become useful in VW.

 

Kudos VW Developers! 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi @Clint Alderman, our feature uses the ESRI's map services to request the geo-imagery. It is not associated with any of the other ESRI's products nor QGIS.

 

The feature is essentially asking for images a web service, and we default to ESRI's servers. You can also use WMS servers, and there are several free ones (note though, they still have some limitations on usage):

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WMS

 

You can experiment with ArcGIS Online: https://www.arcgis.com

This is essentially equivalent of what we have in Vectorworks, only we talk to image services only at the moment.

 

You can play around with this without making a user in www.arcgis.com, click on the 'Map' at the top. 

Once you log it, you'll have access to more services.

 

Regards,

Vlado

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@drcrescencio yes, as a mater of fact all you need to do is set a point on your blank sheet. It will then ask you to choose a coordinate system, and you can simply type an address or the coordinates of the site. Its that easy! and if you choose to ensure your positioning and accuracy you can use the Gret Circle tool to check the length over the coordinate system and site. 

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1 hour ago, bgoff said:

@drcrescencio yes, as a mater of fact all you need to do is set a point on your blank sheet. It will then ask you to choose a coordinate system, and you can simply type an address or the coordinates of the site. Its that easy! and if you choose to ensure your positioning and accuracy you can use the Gret Circle tool to check the length over the coordinate system and site. 

 

What's the file size of the sat image? Whenever I've done this (the soon to be obsolete way) with a screenshot (on a 4k monitor) of Google maps (and then scaled to the drawing), it bloats the file size.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@Mark Aceto as for file size. Yes there will be some file size added. I have not seen it to be that big though. As for your present workflow of sizing the image the old fashioned way. This new process is incredibly easy and fast. I spent some time experimenting with faking or using wrong coordinate systems and using imagery on known drawings and even though the imagery is brought in it is very evident of being the wrong size due to a skewed mercator and a distant zero, zero. In a nutshell its fantastic and might I say really fun! You didn't think you would hear that in a GIS conversation!!

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
3 hours ago, drcrescencio said:

I tried to use GIS in the VW2017 and it's extreme painful.
So, for the VW2020, the main idea is to set a CRS and use the ESRI Satellite Basemap? 

 

My philosophical view on this is that GIS is still as complicated, especially the coordinate system component of it. However, with the new feature, you can see if you are correct at all times as you can always use the Geolocate tool, and see how you drawing fit the globe.

 

It's like before you only had to infer to other files to find the mistake, where now you can see the background from the beginning and know when you made it misalign.

 

Your first step should always be to setup the CRS (coordinate system). This is especially true if you work with survey DWG files, which were the source of confusion and complexity before, as DWG doesn't carry CRS. This way whey you imported it in 2019, it would get moved to the center automatically and thus break the GIS.

 

In 2020, you should setup the CRS in Vectorworks, then import the DWG with the GIS option on, and your data will land perfectly on the GIS. And, you can verify this by using the Geolocate tool.

 

1 hour ago, Matt Overton said:

Any Licensing / Copyright issue we'll need to deal with if the Imagery is used as an underlay to a drawing?

 

The Licensing/Copyright is always a concern when using geo images from services. This is true for ESRI or WMS servers. You should read the licensing for each service you are planning to you always and make sure you can use it in your project.

 

The default satellite and map services that we use from ESRI come with a restriction on image download.

This means that we will strip the images form the VWX file on file save. All other export or print will contain them.

When you open this VWX file back up, you'll be able to see the Geoimage objects and update them to get the images back.

So all the context is saved and the image can be just re-downloaded.

 

In an SP release, we'll make it so the images will be saved if you are logged in ESRI user.

 

Note, this is the same for the geo-image texture that we'll create for Site Models that have the option to texture with GIS image turned on.

 

2 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:

What's the file size of the sat image?

 

see above about licensing. we'll not save those images in the main release. SP will make those images be saved when logged in ESRI user. Then it will affect the file size depending how much pixes are being stored, which you have control over, trading size for image quality.

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16 hours ago, Vladislav Stanev said:

 

My philosophical view on this is that GIS is still as complicated, especially the coordinate system component of it. However, with the new feature, you can see if you are correct at all times as you can always use the Geolocate tool, and see how you drawing fit the globe.

 

It's like before you only had to infer to other files to find the mistake, where now you can see the background from the beginning and know when you made it misalign.

 

Your first step should always be to setup the CRS (coordinate system). This is especially true if you work with survey DWG files, which were the source of confusion and complexity before, as DWG doesn't carry CRS. This way whey you imported it in 2019, it would get moved to the center automatically and thus break the GIS.

 

In 2020, you should setup the CRS in Vectorworks, then import the DWG with the GIS option on, and your data will land perfectly on the GIS. And, you can verify this by using the Geolocate tool.

 

 

The Licensing/Copyright is always a concern when using geo images from services. This is true for ESRI or WMS servers. You should read the licensing for each service you are planning to you always and make sure you can use it in your project.

 

The default satellite and map services that we use from ESRI come with a restriction on image download.

This means that we will strip the images form the VWX file on file save. All other export or print will contain them.

When you open this VWX file back up, you'll be able to see the Geoimage objects and update them to get the images back.

So all the context is saved and the image can be just re-downloaded.

 

In an SP release, we'll make it so the images will be saved if you are logged in ESRI user.

 

Note, this is the same for the geo-image texture that we'll create for Site Models that have the option to texture with GIS image turned on.

 

 

see above about licensing. we'll not save those images in the main release. SP will make those images be saved when logged in ESRI user. Then it will affect the file size depending how much pixes are being stored, which you have control over, trading size for image quality.

 

All of this sounds like a grand slam.

 

Just received this in my inbox from ESRI, which might help folks dig into GIS best practices: http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc19/index.html

 

Speaking of the old fashioned way, I believe one of the benefits of this new method is access to more recent sat imagery, right? So it could be 3 months old instead of 3 years?

 

Again, really hoping for an updated GIS Tutorial... 🤞🏼🙏🏼

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