I have search through many of the Idea postings and found bits and pieces of a request for specific site planning tools, but I wanted to group these all into one BIG idea. It seems to me this is one HUGE vertical market which has been ignored for a while and that is the planning market. Yes, we have roads, bridges, and drainage, but a significant part of site planning includes grading for buildings, parking lots, parks, plazas, and other similar site planning components.
My of my colleagues who work in planning are often quite amazed at what Infraworks can accomplish with the toolset available today but are routinely disappointed that I cannot do a simple right angle or simple geometric primitives such as rectangles, circles, and n-gons, nor can I create a simple parking lot that connects to a component road and has simple curbs. While the manual creation of coverages and land areas can accomplish some basic attributes, I end up reverting back to CAD or other tools to do a simple function such as drawing an elliptical shape for a paver, then much convert that to a SHP file so that I might import it into InfraWorks. Needless to say, the current workflow is a complete turnoff to the average planner or architect.
I see so much potential for InfraWorks in both the planning and architectural vertical markets, yet it still seems to me to be still stuck languishing in the infrastructure side of the toolset. So, to be more constructive with my comments above, I propose the following areas of focus, which could be introduced as a bonus pack fo the AEC collection:
1. Basic CAD Tools for drawing - This would include all the basic drawing tools you would see in Autocad; polylines, rectangles, ellipses, polygons, snapping, splines, etc.
2. Grading Tools - I will defer to my colleagues who know this discipline much better than I, but the existing tools lack some basic grading options than just the nodes on a coverage area and the flatten function.
3. Curbs and lots - Cannot do a parking lot properly and cannot get the "hacked" lot to work and integrate with a component road. If this were done properly, you can derive quantities and areas, and have some tools to fill out parking bays and other markings.
4. Construction planning for lots - This would be GOLD for the construction side of planning, how to get equipment and supplies into and out of a site. Even some basic tools to start would be useful and add further augmentations such as space planning to determine how many loaders you can run at a time and how many trucks can move through, add functions to work with the Mobility module for traffic simulation, determine quantities for excavation, assign color coding for specific contractors, etc. I am sure the construction people could add more ideas here.
5. Interface site planning with Civil 3d and Revit - Use the site planning capabilities to plan out what would ultimately be finished in both packages. InfraWorks can import a Revit model, why can't you send the resulting site planning information back to Revit?
6. Integration with FormIT - You can do basic building massings in InfraWorks. Why couldn't you send those to FormIT, augment the design, then send that back to InfraWorks? Why not the same for Revit?
7. Better site tools would allow for better landscape design - This goes without saying. I would even recommend adding quantities calculations for plant types and planter areas. With this, you could determine water requirements or maintenance requirements. Perhaps this might even tie in with many of the drainage tools.
8. Integration with CFD tools - After some basic site planning is completed, it would be ideal to send this to the cloud for some basic CFD or similar calculations for analysis of the site. With the addition of an API, this would open up numerous possibilities for third-party modules.
9. Access to a store for 3D models - This needs to be an Idea request by itself, but many of the site planners have a range of items they like to use regularly. Autodesk needs to have a range of 3D objects to assist planners in adding specific items or character to their site design. People, cars, lamps, vegetation, etc.
I realize this is a big ask, but I envision this as a HUGE benefit to the planning community and would be welcomed happily by the InfraWorks user base in general.
