Recently, I had the opportunity to present a live demonstration focused on the advantages of using the AEC Collection for a civil site plan. The goal of the session was to demonstrate how the many tools in the collection can work together to take a project from conceptual design through finished visualizations. Fortunately, the session was recorded, giving us the opportunity to share it here!
If you have access to the AEC Collection and are using a small handful of tools, this presentation can help you take advantage of even more applications and increase the value of your investment. If you are someone who leverages Civil 3D to accomplish most of your design work, this presentation will introduce you to many of the purpose-built, time-saving tools and workflows made possible using the AEC Collection.
If you are interested, I’ve added a link to the recording below…
Today's drone technology makes it easy to collect existing site conditions as a point cloud. Once captured, point clouds provide a wealth of analytic opportunities. In this week’s installment, we'll use Civil 3D to analyze a point cloud and extract the volume of a large stockpile.
If your projects require you to calculate stockpile volumes, try experimenting with a point cloud workflow. Capturing stockpiles as point clouds can be the fastest and safest means of collecting this data, while also providing more detail than what is obtainable using more traditional collection methods.
If you are interested, I’ve created a quick video below to help you get started…
When using ReCap Photo to process drone imagery, you have the option of creating a 3D point cloud. This point cloud can serve many purposes! When added to an InfraWorks model for example, the cloud can be used to improve the accuracy of the existing ground surface.
In this week’s installment, we’ll look at how to import a point cloud from ReCap Photo into InfraWorks. We will then use the “Point Cloud Terrain” feature to extract a bare earth surface that will provide additional detail and accuracy to a site model. If you are interested, I've created a quick video that walks through a possible workflow...
NOTE: Point clouds created from imagery will produce surface elevations matching a site’s vegetation: grass, brush, crops, etc. (Basically, the surface represents what the camera “sees”.) Point clouds created from Lidar however, will provide the most accurate bare earth extraction as the laser used to collect the data is capable of penetrating vegetation.
Using today’s drone technology, it’s easier than ever to obtain current, high quality aerial imagery for most any project site. The ease in which these images are created also means they can be “swapped out” frequently (even daily) as site conditions change!
In our last session we looked at how ReCap Photo can be used to convert a collection of drone images into a high resolution orthographic aerial image. In this week’s installment, we’ll look at how that orthographic image can be incorporated into an InfraWorks model. If you are interested, I’ve created a video below that walks through the workflow...
-Jeff
Note: If you would like to review the ReCap Photo workflow used to create the image used in this example, please follow the link below… https://youtu.be/W560LxggqeM
It’s surprising how easy it is to create a 3D mesh from drone captured imagery using ReCap Photo. In the event your aerial images contain GPS metadata (Latitude, Longitude, Altitude) ReCap photo can leverage this information to scale and geospatially locate the mesh. If higher accuracy is required, ReCap photo allows you to assign Ground Control Points such that the resulting 3D mesh is aligned to surveyed coordinates.
Whenever ReCap Photo processes a mesh, it can also generate a point cloud and/or ortho TIF if desired. These assets can then be easily incorporated into a Civil 3D or InfraWorks model. In this week’s installment we’ll use ReCap Photo to create an accurate 3D mesh that leverages surveyed ground control points. If you are interested, I’ve created a quick video that walks through the workflow…
For those of you that know me, I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to throw anything away. I just can’t get past the angst that I might need (or be able to use) the discarded item(s) at some point in the future.
That is the catalyst for today’s installment.
In short, we will be reviewing how to create Regions in ReCap Pro. Using Regions, we can quickly cleanup / organize Point Cloud information. We do this by selecting a series of unnecessary points (as defined by our particular project needs) and rather than deleting them, we add them to a Region that can be hidden from view.
In doing so, these points are removed from our display but can be easily restored if they are ever required in the future.
Regions = A non-destructive approach to deleting. 😊
