3D Model Rotation

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I'm struggling to understand how Infraworks rotates some blocks. For instance, an FBX block I created in AutoCAD, like a traffic light.

The bottom of the pole is at coordinate 0,0,0. See picture below with a red vertical line showing its coordinates

I then insert this into Infraworks by dragging and drop, select city furniture and interactive placing. The 3D model is inserted at the bottom of the people. All fine here. Now, if I want to rotate the block, it rotates around the centre of its bounding box, instead of its insertion. Is it possible to change this behaviour?

Cheers

Javier

[pat.lowe]

Hi @Anonymous

For FBX objects, this is the intended way that objects are rotated around the bounding box in Infraworks.  You have the ability to rotate it according to angle, but that is still centered around the bounding box. 

When you place that data under city furniture, it should be listed on the data sources.  If you right click on the fbx and click configure, there are rotation values that can be changed there.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply Pat. Unfortunately I don't think that would work. Let's say you're given a shape file with light pole locations. You import this shp into IW and select a certain light pole style (e.g. 3D Model>Bridge>Components>Lightpole). When hitting "Close and Refresh" all poles will be placed at the exact location but they'll have, most likely, a rotation that won't suit the road layout. So you have to rotate them one by one. Since the rotation happens around the centre of the bounding box, the location of the pole will be modified. This could be critical if you are widening a road and need to make sure there's enough clearance.

Regards

Javier

[pat.lowe · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous

Alright, so I asked around on this one and have an explanation for you:

The behavior of an object, such as yours above, when brought into Infraworks is like this: "if you import a 3D model via drag and drop, you can specify a rotation in the first tab. That is applied with respect to the chosen anchor point. So if you choose "local origin" as anchor, the rotation will work as expected. "center 2d" will rotate around the lower center of the bounding box. So using the data source config and typing a rotation angle would work. However, the rotation gizmos available in the canvas will ALWAYS rotate around the center of the bounding box, regardless of the anchor chosen in the data source config. So manually tweaking the rotation after import won't work. Similarly, editing the feature properties (using the old Alt+2 dialog) won't work."

However, the workflow designed is: "import a shp file with object locations and then manually adjust the rotation. For that I may have found a way: Create a 3D model style from your 3d model (with local origin as anchor). Then import your shp file and assign the style as rule style. If you have a column in your shp file that contains the rotation angle, assign it using the table tab. This will rotate the individual 3D models around their anchor, NOT around the bounding box center. You can also fine tune individual models after import this way: select a model, open the properties widget (Alt+2) and type the angle into the RotateZ field. This also rotates around the anchor. DO NOT use the gizmos for rotation as they will mess things up."

Please let me know if you have any questions on that.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that Pat. I'll do that next time.

Cheers

Javier