topic Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline! in InfraWorks Forum

185 Mile Long Pipeline!

sduffin — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 00:04:12 GMT

I have an opportunity to model a 185 mile 60" long water pipeline from Page Arizona to St George Utah - commonly known as the Lake Powell Pipeline. It will transfer water from Lake Powell to the St George area (and other places) -- see the following link for some info on the pipeline:

http://www.wcwcd.org/projects/lake-powell-pipeline/

What are the best practices for modeling a project of this length? I would love to hear from all those expert-elites out there who have great ideas. I have completed quite a few Infraworks models and I love the program but I am not quite sure the best way to tackle this project! Thanks in advance for your input!

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

Matt__W — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 01:41:30 GMT

The only thing that comes to mind is merging multiple models. At 185 miles long, I shudder to think how long this process would take. And would it be worth it in the end? Could you maybe model major areas that the pipeline crosses through?

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

JasonArtley — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 13:23:35 GMT

I agree with Matt. You could create multiple models, perhaps starting at 10 miles each. It would require a beast of a computer to handle merging them all.

Just modeling the critical crossings seems like the best use of time and effort. Good luck! Please let us know how it turns out!

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

sduffin — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 14:06:12 GMT

I should clarify that my end goal is to create a video fly-through of the entire corridor (at a fast speed of course). Perhaps this is better suited to a Google Earth Pro video-making exercise. If any of those Autodesk Expert Elite gurus, or other people smarter than me, have other insights into how to approach this, I would love to hear more! Thanks for the comments so far and those are good suggestions.

Attached is an image of the overall alignment. I have shape files of the proposed alignment and many months ago I took a preliminary crack at creating the model just to see what I could generate. I did this by using the shape files to generate an area = to the maximum area I coulld use in Model Builder (200 sq km). This results in the 185 mile corridor with a width of 3,000 +/- feet. This is a great start but it really fails to give the model context due to the limited width (see attached image). I really need a model that is 10+/- miles wide to show the proper context.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

Matt__W — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 14:22:13 GMT

I don't know much about how Google Earth Pro works but after doing a little reading it looks like you can create a "Tour" video by adding Placemarks and GE will auto-magically navigate from one to the next.

Can you import data, such as an SHP/KML file to create the Placemarks? What I'm thinking is this... you've got an alignment for pipeline right now. You could use the measure command in AutoCAD Civil 3D to place a point every half mile or so and export those points to SHP/KML format and then import the SHP/KML into GE as Placemarks. That may not be the exact workflow. Just sort of thinking out loud about how to possibly attack this.

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

John_DeLeeuw — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 19:58:03 GMT

@sduffin, I don't see any problem for that size in a single model, depending you take note of a couple of things.

Current limitation of the Model Builder is 200 km², you can easily create a model based on a 1 km buffer along your Alignment and 200 km length right now. Use AutoCAD Map 3D or Civil 3D for creating the buffer as a closed polygon and (map)export that to *.SHP for use in Model Builder.
The Rolling Sandbox version of InfraWorks 360 goes way beyond this and if you really need to create larger base models I suggest you get yourselve listed in the beta program so you can start creating extremely large models.
If you don't want to use Model Builder as a base model and have the right GIS data sources access, then just go for it and take note of these very good tips and tricks on the BIMagination blog.
Also check this post from @elliott.rosenfeld and the tips shared. Elliot has personally created models of over 14.000 km² so whats the big deal?

Below also an example of an InfraWorks 360 model I created of a 300 km long stretch accross the Netherlands, from South to North:

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

elliott.rosenfeld — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 20:16:39 GMT

Thanks for posting this John, these were my thoughts as well.

If you can't accomplish everything with Model Builder-- which is an excellent service that does a fantastic job getting users started for most projects-- but not the supreme source for all projects because it is limited to 200 sq.km. for users not in the sandbox, then it may be easiest to just start with a large, publicly available terrain data source that covers your desired project area, use the free Bing Maps database connection to populate imagery to your terrain, try out Open Street Maps for obtaining your Roads, Highway, Rail and Building data, and voila! you've got a huge model.

Keep sharing about your experiences, I love hearing about how people are pushing the out-of-the-box capabilities to go BIG!

Best,

Elliott

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

John_DeLeeuw — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 20:53:10 GMT

@elliott.rosenfeld,

Big, bigger, biggest

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

Matt__W — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 20:54:19 GMT

Show off....

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

sduffin — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 13:37:36 GMT

Thanks to all for your input on this thread. I have a few options it looks like. This information is really helpful and I appreciate the time everyone has taken to respond!

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

elliott.rosenfeld — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 19:40:00 GMT

Wow John! Impressive that you've got such excellent imagery for the entire globe rendering. Or did you replace the default globe imagery? Mind sharing your process?

Last time I looked into doing a model of the entire globe was in early 2015, and I didn't go into such excellent detail at that point. Here's what I did, if I remember correctly.

Force infraworks 360 to render the ENTIRE GLOBE using shp polygons for continent coverage areas styled grass green, then changed default terrain to blue, so that ocean areas are blue.
Added the International Space Station to my model as a 3D model object, correctly locating it in static position. (I found a 3D model of ISS on SketchUp, and imported it as city furniture (or POI would work also, I assume). I gave it a real world coordinate location based on its current location, using X/Y for lat/long, then a vertical offset of 408,000 meters (i.e. altitude above earth of 408 km).
Also added an <iframe> to the NASA page for the ISS.

Here are a couple of views:

publicly available data tracking ISS

ISS and globe (this used a tiny Model Builder model with the ISS added to it.)

ISS over simple continents (never tried adding imagery)

I actually never finished what I was attempting to do...got pulled away into work. My end goal was to continually refresh the location of the Space Station in my model using JavaScript or Python. I found a couple of publicly available modules that looked like they would do the trick, but I didn't find the time to play around with it.

- public JavaScript module (https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js) that provides position and velocity of ISS. (given these Celestrak TLEs for ISS:
  ISS (ZARYA)
  
  1 25544U 98067A 15198.41643006 .00013727 00000-0 20635-3 0 9997
  
  2 25544 51.6459 293.0637 0001430 239.1386 208.2086 15.55163969952745)

Another couple of items on my wish list for BIG InfraWorks 360 projects when I find time are:

model the entire Pacific Ocean and associated coastlines in order to simulate Tsunami impact arrival times for earthquake/storm events.
add a custom coordinate system for Mars to an IW360 project and use NASA imagery/terrain data for the red planet, then track Curiosity's path along the planet in realtime.
Use simple JPG imagery from NASA to wrap JPG textures around spheres in a photo editing application, then create a scale model of the Solar System inside IW360.

Sorry to get carried away on your thread @sduffin 🙂

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

elliott.rosenfeld — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 19:40:43 GMT

Glad that you're getting some answers that work for you!

Thanks,

Elliott

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

John_DeLeeuw — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 22:09:40 GMT

@elliott.rosenfeld, your ideas rock!

Let's see how far we can take this (think we need another thread )

For now, I managed to set the Moon in place, some 384400 km from Earth with a radius of 1737 km. In this image, its zenith is just west of Thailand:

I even managed to get a view of the Moon in te sky from my exact home coordinate which is in the Netherlands:

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

elliott.rosenfeld — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 15:56:26 GMT

This is so freakin cool John! I'll look for another venue for this type of exploration..Maybe we can convince Eric C. to open up another shared model similar to Alienville, for solar system-level work. The Dev/QA teams are always interested to hear about attempts to break IW360 by modeling the galaxy or other such fun 🙂

Best,

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

Eric_Chappell — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 18:30:48 GMT

@elliott.rosenfeld anyone can start up a model and invite others to collaborate. I encourage @John_DeLeeuw to be the pioneer here 🙂

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

Karsten.Saenger — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 09:46:37 GMT

Impressive, John.

Looks as if it's time to define a new interplanetary coordinate system.

Cheers,

Karsten.

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

AngelEspinoza2024 — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 16:14:28 GMT

This model contains the Star Wars Imperial Death Star at scale.

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

Matt__W — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 16:36:34 GMT

Death Star 1 or 2? 🙂

Re: 185 Mile Long Pipeline!

AngelEspinoza2024 — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 16:38:32 GMT

Death Star 1.