Helpful Tips for InfraWorks 360
For the past few years InfraWorks® 360 has made several software improvements and upgrades in order to make the software as productive and efficient as possible for design professionals. But with so much that goes on at work, some users miss out on lunch-n-learns and online training webinars or forget to download the software updated from the Autodesk Application Manager. This causes users to fall behind in learning some key tools and features that would benefit them during their design process. Here, you will learn a few helpful tips that will make your design experience with InfraWorks 360 much easier and user friendly.
Throughout this article you will learn a few tips and tricks dealing with proposals, quick keys, pavement marking, building facades, and collaboration with InfraWorks 360 and AutoCAD® Civil 3D 2016.
Tip #1: Working with Proposals
Probably one of the most important steps when starting a new project in InfraWorks 360 is to create multiple proposals. With InfraWorks 360, design professionals can create multiple design concepts with ease, which allows the owner/developers to select the best feasible design concepts for the project. By creating multiple design proposals, the project can get reviewed and approved much faster, which in turn allows for construction to begin at an earlier stage.
As a default, InfraWorks 360 creates the master proposal, whether you create a new project from scratch or use the Model Builder. The master proposal represents the existing conditions of your project. Existing GIS objects and features will be imported into this proposal such as existing terrain, aerials, roads, buildings, water feature, and city furniture. Once you have completed this step, created a new proposal by accessing the proposal feature on the utility bar.
Figure 1: Create new proposal
From this point, you can begin creating you first design concept. After you have completed you first concept design, it’s best to create at least two more alternative concept designs. You can either start from existing conditions by switching back to the master proposal, then selecting the “Add New” proposal features, or if you just want to modify the first design concept, create a new proposal. InfraWorks will basically make a copy of your first design concept to work from. By creating multiple design concepts, the preliminary design process could be drastically reduced.
Tip #2: Using Quick Keys
For those who work in software such as AutoCAD®, Map® 3D, and AutoCAD Civil 3D, understand that there are many ways to perform a command or access a command. For example, in AutoCAD if you want to copy an object you can either use the “CO” copy command, or you can access the command from the ribbon, pull-down menus, or even your right-click options.
We all work in Autodesk software in different manners—some are command users who type all their commands and use LISP routines. Some use pull-down menus with a mixture of right-click options. Others are icon ribbon users who only use icon features.
All these workflow methods are great, but in InfraWorks 360 the software interface is different. For starters, there is no command line. I’m sure this a little frustrating for you command users, but fear not. InfraWorks 360 does have simple keyboard shortcuts you can use. At the top right-hand corner, you will see the help icon. If you click it once you will be provided with a list of helpful resources. In that list you will see the Keyboard Shortcuts. If you select this, you will be sent to the InfraWorks online help web page where you will find a list of roughly 50 different keyboard shortcuts you can use while designing in InfraWorks 360.
Figure 2: Quick access to keyboard shortcuts
These keyboard shortcuts include navigation, file management, editing, measurements, user interface, and storyboard/snapshot. Some of the keyboard shortcuts are common such as Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V for cutting and pasting features.
Even though the InfraWorks 360 user interface is not as flexible as other Autodesk software, the software itself is extremely user friendly and it does help having these keyboard shortcuts.
Tip #3: Importing Pavement Markings
When dealing with commercial projects with parking lot areas, it’s always best to add parking stalls and any pavement markings such as ADA crossing, traffic lane arrows, and lane striping in order to add realism to the model. Without pavement marking, the site model would not look right and project the vision the client wants. In addition, pavement design requirements could be missed—such as the number of parking stalls or allowable ADA access routes. This in turn would hinder design approval from city or government review agencies. One of the best ways I have learned to create pavement markings in InfraWorks 360 is to import the linework from AutoCAD or AutoCAD Civil 3D as a .sdf file.
In order to import the pavement markings into InfraWorks 360, you must first create the linework inside AutoCAD or AutoCAD Civil 3D. It is best that all the pavement marking linework is polylines and lines. Then use the “layer isolate” command so that only your pavement marking or stripping layers appear. Next, use the “mapimport” command. The Export Location dialog box appears.
In here, you are provided with several different types of file formats to save the linework as. Select the Autodesk SDF (*.sdf) file type option and then the desired file location. After you click OK, the Export dialog box appears. You have the options to “Select All” linework within the drawing or select individual linework manually. In addition, you also have the ability to use filters options such as by layers or object class within the Export dialog box. I typically prefer to use the “Select manually” option just in case I have some unwanted linework on my layer. Click OK.
Figure 3: Linework export options
Now open InfraWorks 360 and then your project model. Importing the pavement marking linework can easily be performed by accessing the Data Sources panel in Create and Manager in-canvas tool within the Build, Manage, and Analyze Your Model Intelligent Tools. In the Data Sources panel, select the small black pull-down at the top left-hand corner and select SDF as your data source. Within the Select File dialog box browse and select that SDF file that you saved, then click OPEN. Next, you will have to configure the data by either double-clicking on your SDF file or clicking the Configure button at the top.
Figure 4: Importing linework
Figure 5: Data Source Configuration dialog
In the Data Source Configuration dialog box, you will notice a yellow triangle next to the Type field. From the small pull-down select Coverage Area. Then at the bottom under Styles click the small edit pencil icon. The Select Style/Color dialog box appears. Select the desire color of your pavement marking such as white or yellow. Click OK.
Next, click the Table tab and scroll down to the Coverage section and type in 0.33 for the Buffer. This will add a thickness to the pavement markings. Click the Close & Refresh button. InfraWorks will instantly insert the pavement markings with the assigned color and line thickness.
Figure 6: Assign color and line thickness to pavement markings
Figure 7: Set Building Facade Detail to medium or high
As an added note, you can import multiple .sdf files to represent different pavement markings such as ADA parking markings that could be blue. Then another data file for traffic arrow markings could be yellow. By using this method, you could save time creating pavement striping.
Tip #4: Building Facade
While driving through a mixed-use commercial development or even a single family subdivision, you will notice that most times, each building or house has its own unique building façade. You may have even noticed that on some buildings, each building face has a different façade style. InfraWorks 360 provides that design flexibility to assign different façade style to a building face. By doing so, it enhances the realism to 3D site model and helps with the approval process with the local city ordinance.
The first step before you create any building is to change the systems settings to allow for detail building façade. Click the Settings and Utilities feature on the Intelligent tool bar. Then select the Application Options feature. In the Application Options dialog box select the Model Generation tab. You will notice an option for Building Façade Detail. In order to assign different façade to each building face, this setting has to be set to medium or high. Click OK when done. Now you are ready to start designing your building.
Figure 8: Façade faces
Creating buildings in InfraWorks 360 can be performed in several different ways. One way is by importing linework data as a shapefile (*.shp) or simple data format (*.sdf), then converting the data into building features. Or simply use the building feature tool, select a building façade in the Select Draw Style asset card, and sketch out the building footprint manually. Once you have completed creating all your proposed design buildings, now you can take your design a step further. With the Styles palette open, you can select a building façade and drag and drop a new façade style onto a building face. While you are dragging the new façade to a building face, you will notice that each building face will highlight green whenever you hover over the building face. If all the building faces highlight green, slowly hover over the building top then point and click the desired building face. InfraWorks will instantly change the building face to the new façade.
As you can see in Figure 8, the design building with different façade faces provided a more real-world environment.
Tip #5: InfraWorks 360 & AutoCAD Civil 3D
Now that we have the ability to have a BIM workflow between InfraWorks 360 and AutoCAD Civil, design professionals can take advantage of multiple collaboration tools to help speed up the preliminary design process in order to save on time and cost for a project.
Figure 9: Close InfraWorks 360 to take advantage of the insert InfraWorks 360 feature in AutoCAD Civil 3D
There are two very simple tips I would like to provide about collaboration between InfraWorks 360 and Civil 3D. One, in order to take advantage of the new insert InfraWorks 360 feature in AutoCAD Civil 3D ribbon, InfraWorks 360 must be closed. This feature opens the sqlite file created by InfraWorks 360 in order to import data such as roads, surfaces, alignments, and storm pipe networks. You would be surprised how many times I actually forget to do this step before I try to import data from InfraWorks 360. Then for a few seconds, I think there is something wrong with either InfraWorks file or the AutoCAD Civil 3D drawing.
The second collaboration tip is when you create a street corridor in AutoCAD Civil 3D and you want to import that corridor into InfraWorks 360, you must make sure that your corridor code sets have material assigned to them—items such as pavement, curbing, sidewalk, and landscape grass areas. If not, the corridor street will not appear correctly in InfraWorks 360. Once the code sets are set correctly, the street corridor will look similar to Figure 10.
Figure 10: Correct code sets make corridor appear correctly in InfraWorks 360
