The Use of Game Engines in GIS

December 13, 2009 8 Comments

Autodesk has been heavily investing in their 3D technology which includes bringing on 3D game developers to help with visualization. I can just imagine their pitch, “Do you want to make millions programming games or change the world with 3D Studio Max?”.

Anyway I was sent this link to a company called Clover Point which is doing some really impressive stuff with 3D gaming engines and enterprise management with their Asset Tracking Anywhere.  Yea I know what you are thinking, how could I possibly get excited about something as boring as enterprise management?  Well in my pervious life (before da cloud) I was heavily involved with asset management and CAFM.  Now if you’ve ever been involved with this, you know how ugly the tools and how non-technical people have a great difficulty visualizing the data presented to them.

ESRI users take note:

Asset Tracking Anywhere also utilizes ESRI’s ArcGIS Server. This suite of products offers advantages over standard map engines in the ease of data layering, data creation, data visualization, data capture, raster-to-vector translation and the manipulation of projection and coordinate systems.

Detailed 3D models and immersive views are a great way to showcase your resources to managers and help them visualize their assets around the world.  Tabular reporting just doesn’t help people understand the impacts of planning and future changes to their business like a great 3D model.  Of course 3D modeling in GIS has been very basic, so I’m happy to see companies pushing the envelope on this.

 

Check out some of Clover Point’s work in these YouTube videos.  As I said, very impressive stuff. What I see here is BIM and GIS coming together to help people make informed decisions.


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CityGML adopted as offical OGC Standard

August 20, 2008 9 Comments

CityGML has officially become an OGC Standard.  This is great news for those of us who are tying to work with and exchange 3D models of buildings and cities.  I’m still a CityGML newbie, but the more I look at the standard and learn about it, the more I’m excited about what we’ll be able to do in the future with BIM and GIS.  Moving data back and forth between BIM and GIS is almost impossible today, but hopefully this is a huge step forward.  You can view the standard at this link (after accepting that wacky OGC license).

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BIM and GIS

June 4, 2008 9 Comments

My hat is off to everyone who had to work within the BIM (Building Information Modeling) space on a daily basis. Talk about using tools that aren’t refined enough (and this is coming from someone who has worked with GIS applications for 15+ years). It was painful hearing about how many hoops folks have to jump through with BIM and how it affects their workflows (not in a good way).

It has been clear to me with all the emails I’ve received from folks wanting to know more about how I’m approaching BIM and GIS, that there is great interest in the subject. Just about everyone of my clients I’ve talked to about the move to the new company has mentioned BIM as something they want to or are being required to get involved with. I’ll make it my goal in the next year or so to keep everyone informed about how things are going and what I’ve learned about working with BIM and GIS.

I’ve just gotten Revit installed on my desktop and as soon as we can square the ArcGIS Desktop licenses we’ll start working on workflows and interoperability.


We don’t need gatekeepers between BIM and GIS

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Acrobat Maps, Email and GeoWeb 2008 Conference

June 2, 2008 2 Comments

I guess the “big” news today was the Acrobat 9 “maps” feature. All Points Blog and Fantom Planet both cover the news in their own unique style. Since ArcGIS 9.3 will support the new PDF maps (with a patch of course) I suspect that this will be very popular, at least in our circles. Just last week I was watching someone take a ruler and put it up to their computer screen to measure distance. Hopefully with Acrobat 9 we won’t have to see this anymore. The bonus part of Adobe putting this in is that the free Adobe Reader supports the mapping features and will hopefully mean that it will be adopted quicker than GeoPDF has.

Now I wonder if this goes with the rumor that I’ve heard that ArcGIS Desktop will support reading of PDF files in the near future.

Also, as many of you know my first day at RSP Architects was today. The best way to get a hold of me via email moving forward will be at this email address.

james.fee@rsparch.com

Lastly, I’m going to be going to the GeoWeb 2008 Conference in July and be on a Spark Panel Session moderated by Geoff Zeiss called “National Critical Infrastructure Data Models: Implications for Local Government and Utilities”. Now if that title doesn’t get you excited, I’m not sure you are alive. Seriously though, I’m looking forward to GeoWeb 2008 as the CAD-BIM papers are right up my alley these days.


We’ll be running up to Vancouver for GeoWeb 2008 this summer.

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