InfraWorks 360 Roadmap Check In

[scunningham]

At Autodesk, we know that feedback from you is what makes our products better. Not only do we want to hear your thoughts about what we've released and shipped so far, we also want your feedback on our plans. While we've always shared our plans in the form of product roadmaps, it's never been easy information to come by. You had to know someone who knew someone who could get you an invitation to an exclusive meeting where product roadmaps were shared with a small group. But times are changing and I'm excited to have the chance to try something new: sharing our product roadmaps, publicly.

First, some ground rules:

1. We're sharing some of the highlights of our product development roadmap to give you a sense of the general direction InfraWorks is heading. There's a lot more work going on behind the scenes and this roadmap doesn't reflect everything the development teams are working on.
2. We're planning to periodically update the roadmap because it is subject to change. When we can, we'll also share videos that show off some of the work-in-progress software.
3. Roadmaps are plans, not promises. We're as excited as you to see new functionality make it into the products, but the development, release, and timing of any features or functionality remains at our sole discretion.
4. These roadmaps should not be used to make purchasing decisions.

Cool? Cool. Now let's talk about the great stuff planned for InfraWorks 360.

Product Roadmap

We uses themes, groups, and colors to keep track of the roadmap details.

 

Anything marked with a star means it's available for use via Autodesk Labs, the InfraWorks 360 Rolling Sandbox, or as Preview functionality in the current release. 

We've grouped our plans by theme:

• Design and Engineering Experience: This is how InfraWorks 360 provides views, feedback and an appropriate level of control while modeling assets.
  
  
• Modeling and Analysis: As InfraWorks 360 matures, we want you to author your infrastructure building information models with assets that are parametric, conditional, extensible, associative and detailed, as well as with analysis and simulation tools.
  
  
• Connected Workflows: Infrastructure data is available to a variety of products - Autodesk products, of course, but others as well. We know that your projects often span many products, which is why InfraWorks 360 supports a spectrum of infrastructure data types, and why we’re continuing to develop cloud-centric cross product workflows.
  
  
• Platform: An ecosystem of services enabled through Forge, consisting of APIs and other resources allowing developers to extend InfraWorks 360 with more data and experiences.

Here's a breakdown of the roadmap details by theme. 

 

You'll see InfraWorks 360 evolve as an engineering design tool. We're working on the best ways to report quantities data and display terrain contours in the model, as well as looking at ways to annotate your models so that you clarify design intent with notes and labels.

Teams are busy working on new modeling, analysis and simulation tools for InfraWorks 360. Also in the works are tools for bridge modeling and analysis, land development, as well as road and highway design. Many of them are already available in the Rolling Sandbox.

 

We're looking at ways you can share information without creating "data silos" or unnecessary copies of data. Making infrastructure data available to a variety of products is about more than new import/export tools. Connecting our products to a common data environment in the cloud is a key to successful collaboration and preserving the integrity of your data. One area we're also looking at is to identify and improve processes for sharing geolocation data across many different types of products. 

 

Have you seen the Forge Platform? Autodesk has established a set of cloud services, APIs and SDKs for developers who want to data, apps, experiences, and services. As Forge evolves, you’ll start to see APIs and services specific to infrastructure. In the meantime, we are planning to release more standards, not unlike the country kits for Civil 3D, that allow designers and engineers in Canada, Europe and Asia to take advantage of the rules-based road design tools in InfraWorks 360 by using country-specific standards. 

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This is a look at just some of the plans for InfraWorks 360. There's a lot more going on, so don't assume the worst if you see something missing. Periodically I’ll share roadmap updates here. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts on our plans. Like I said before, your feedback helps us focus on the right things to deliver great products. 

[Matt__W]

I would HIGHLY recommend users join the beta testing group and play around with the Rolling Sandbox version. Instead of just reading what might happen, get your geek on, jump into the sandbox and get dirty with some of the beta tools and help influence the future of Infraworks. I'm not gonna lie... the parking lot layout tools are WICKED AWESOME!! They need some work, but man... SO COOL!!

https://beta.autodesk.com/callout/?callid=35CF72D713DE44BC980D976E43AB6FB1

[JasonArtley]

This is fantastic, I am truly excited to watch this amazing software evolve. I appreciate the willingness to share the roadmap with all of us. Thanks!

One complaint I've had, and have heard from others, is the lack of residential building styles. Has there been any discussion about including styles that look more like an average house? It's difficult to make a convincing neighborhood when every style looks like a mansion or office building. 

[scunningham]

It turns out you’re not alone. I did a quick search on Ideas for “facades” and found at least 3 other ideas from customers who also have specific ideas about modeling building exteriors. (The results of that search are here<>.) While none of them specifically called out more residential-looking façade styles, they do address the idea of having more control over how buildings look.

Right now, it’s not on our roadmap. If people think it should be, then I’d encourage everyone to give all of those façade-related ideas some kudos to keep the topic on our radar for consideration. Thanks for the kind words, and the great suggestion.

[scunningham]

Your compliment made the development team's day, Matt. We appreciate all the feedback, especially how we can improve things, but it's good to know when we've gotten something right, too. Thank you!  

[Eduardo.Soethe]

@Matt__W is correct, the parking lot need more attentions
I did this project ( https://infraworks-gallery.autodesk.com/projects/project-duval---fulfillment-center-in-jacksonvillef... ) in Infraworks 360 but could not use the parking tool because the tool is not very editable and has no options that involve slope of drainage!

[Matt__W]

*blushing*  

It still needs some work but you're definitely on to something. I just need more time to play around with it and post my comments/suggestions in the beta group forum.

[gperego]

Hi Scunningham,

I really appreciate your courage to publish the InfraWorks 360 Roadmap.

There is a lot of interesting new functionalities.

I follow the InfraWorks 360 evolution from 2011, when it was Infrastructure Modeler 🙂 in my italian GIS & Infrastructure Blog.
You can read it at: http://www.gisinfrastrutture.it

You can translate it in your language with the up right botton.

Here in Italy we had a new law this year, for public procurement, introducing BIM.

And a lot of customers are beginning to use InfraWorks 360 & Civil 3D, the Dynamic Duo.

I should be vary glad to see the Italian Country Kit appear in the Roadmap!

Many thanks

Giovanni

[guidobonin]

gperego I support your request

[bcarriere]

I've been playing around in the sandbox trying to simulate flooding. How would you guys simulate a river or stream flooding with water elevations only?

It would be nice if there was a way to enter water elevations or flood stage in feet over a period of days in the flood simulator. I'm no hydrologist, and it would be nice to achieve a flood simulation keeping it simple. 

[Anonymous]

Did you try project Boulder? It was in the autodesk labs and did exactly what you are describing.

[scunningham]

I've seen examples where city planners created a variety of proposals (or scenarios), varying the size of a water area in each, and then using another tool to create an animated video to simulate what the flooding would look like. Project Boulder (referenced in the post below) achieves a similar effect by calculating water elevations based on data from the model (but I'm guessing that is not quite what you're looking to do.) 

[bcarriere]

Yes, I'm using the Project Boulder graduate that is a part of the Sandbox build 184. I also have RiverFlow 2D for InfraWorks installed. Everything worked when I tested it during the Labs Project stage. In Sandbox the first few steps actually work, but when the actual simulation starts, I get errors and the simulation terminates.

[bcarriere]

"Project Boulder (referenced in the post below) achieves a similar effect by calculating water elevations based on data from the model (but I'm guessing that is not quite what you're looking to do.) "

Water elevations are exactly what I want to enter, but Project Bolder requires:

Hydrograph that defines: Flow in cfs, Mannings value, and Duration in hours

Or

Static: Q in cfs

There is not an option to simply enter water elevation.

However, there is a Rainfall Content item on the same panel as the Flood Simulation. Maybe they work together. I am going to look into this over the weekend.

[Charlie.Ogden]

Hi Beverly, I see your post in the Sandbox forum.  I will reply to you there.

Thanks!

[fcernst]

Currently,  the Analysis-Driven Drainage Design is giving meaningless engineering results because the tributary area is limited to the back of curb. This odd tributary area limitation is not the case in the real world.

-We also need to be able to enter allowable spread and an allowable depth so that the analysis-driven design engine can place inlets only where these values are exceeded.

-The "Maximum Spacing" setting is incorrectly placed on the asset card under Inlets..it should be placed under Manholes. Manholes are typically placed no further than 400' in practice, due to maintenance reasons.When adding a drainage network the routine is incorrectly putting a pair of inlets at each manhole with this setting. Inlets should only be placed where street capacity is beginning to be exceeded, and at all sag (low) points.

I don't see on the Road Map where these items are going to be addressed.

[gperego]

Hi Sarah,

I see the Roadmap has no updates from 2017.1

Now we are near the 2018 Release, is there a new Roadmap?

Many thanks

Giovanni

[eblackburnEFFVJ]

definitely interested in a current version of the roadmap. Still frustrated that I can't bring IW content into Revit easily.

[Karsten.Saenger]

Hi @eblackburnEFFVJ ,

the latest roadmap for InfraWorks (Dec. 2019) can be found here:
https://blogs.autodesk.com/infrastructure-reimagined/infraworks-public-roadmap-october-2019/

Regards,

Karsten.