An open letter to InfraWorks

[samir_rezk]

Dear InfraWorks,

How I wish you become a bit maturer and graduate from being like a lost child. I feel like you have great potential if only you focus! Currently you can produce lines by point extraction yet the line work is useless in InfraWorks. You create nice visualizations yet not dynamically linked to the detailed design. You create roads and drainage networks that are impractical for a detailed engineer in the office. You want to analyze traffic, yet no one knows about your abilities. You have easy to use terrain analysis tools yet the terrain itself is inaccurate. Please stop being a jack of all trades because you’re a master of none!

You mingle with GIS, BIM and CAD. Yet you don’t want to learn from your friends. Imagine yourself having a GIS foundation with powerful analysis, overlaid with true infrastructure BIM for dynamic and  parametric modeling capabilities while empowering the detail centric and flexible CAD utilities; imagine how amazing the possibilities can be in your future.

Hope you have a productive year 🙂

[roskirko]

Watch Lucy Kuhns' explanation of how data is utilized in the Autodesk world.

Especially listen to the comments about how Infraworks development is not apparently conforming, and therefore restricting cross-software data transfer, at 1:09:20 mark of this video from Lucy::

https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/class/Data-Lab-How-Link-Extract-Customize-and-Extend-Da...

The statement indicates that three years ago the Infraworks developers were going "their own way" and apparently not interested in cross-software data transference from within their own company's software offferings.

The engineering aspects, as you mentioned,  are quite superficial for those dealing with hard core engineering analysis as required in Part 4 of all building codes (this is analysis from first principles (physics driven) and not table driven such as in picking out a beam size based on load data from a table). There needs to be better linkages to Autodesk Nastrans for FEA, Autodesk CFD, the Green Building Studio for the interaction with the  Climate Engine and especially to Civil 3D itself.