Civil Engineering Design functions

[Joel_graff]

have been on this myself since the early 1980's, working with CEAL,s COGO developers at that point for production project in Earthwork, Civil Engineering and Surveying. Just now finding the time and mindset to move on these areas.

Feel free to keep us updated. I may be wrong on my views of COGO - I can only speak to the general (and limited) experience I've had, which has been to avoid using it, if possible. Nevertheless, if there is value to expanding FreeCAD's capabilities to better serve your domain, we're always interested in hearing about it.

Just be aware that as it stands, I don't see that there's much we can do, especially since you appear to be developing a new language using M++ (which appears to be a modeling language like UML...?). We use Python and C++, here, and I don't think you'll find much interest in supporting anything other than that.

All the same, I'm pinging a couple others who might have some insights...

ping

ping

[emir]

The company in which I'm working is testing FreeCAD and ArchiCAD in order to find the best solution for our everyday task which is Generating land use regulation plans for construction projects for whole industrial/residential areas.

We don't do any design work: We dispose of all ministerial mensuration (geo)data, also the design of the planned constructions are provided by the area developper (mostly in dxf, in rare cases in GML/CityGML/Collada/KML).

These plans that we create contain

• the existing and the planned terrain (prescinded),
• the perimeter for which the regulation will be legally binding
• volumes which represent the (in all 3 dimensions) limiting extension boundary (as part of the regulation) for the planned buildings,
• the planned buildings themselves (prescinded) inclusive the floors,
• surrounding existing buildings (prescinded),
• prescinded/generalized volumes of existing and planned trees,
• street areas,
• areas with vegetation,
• ponds,
• rivers, etc.

The corresponding CityGML level of detail for all elements of the plan is LOD1 or LOD2.

Such a plan is released in the x-y-plan view and in at least two elevation views (sections). The plan contains a carefully chosen symbolism with a respective legend. It contains also labels for the names of the houses and streets, for the base area of the buildings, for the number of trees, and for the extension limits in the z-Axis of the houses.
Up to now, everything is being drawn manually in Microstation. The idea is to make the workflow more effective by automating the sections, the labeling and the legend. We also use GIS in our company (which could provide the automatic legend and labeling, but not the sections).
I'm still new to FreeCAD, but I've seen that the techdraw mode provides automatic section generation of Arch components. I also saw that annotations/labels can be added to a drawing which are always updated after editing the model.

My questions are:

• Is it in the actual version of FreeCAD possible to realize the Arch component "land" out of an ascii point cloud terrain model in order to integrate it into the section?
• Can symbolism and legend creation be realized with the techdraw of FreeCAD?
• Our decision might depend on if FreeCAD will enable LandXML/GML/CityGML integration or not. How is the development going in this regard?

[Joel_graff]

Welcome to FreeCAD!

My questions are:
Is it in the actual version of FreeCAD possible to realize the Arch component "land" out of an ascii point cloud terrain model in order to integrate it into the section?
Can symbolism and legend creation be realized with the techdraw of FreeCAD?
Our decision might depend on if FreeCAD will enable LandXML/GML/CityGML integration or not. How is the development going in this regard?

We've recently been working in this area and the guy who will know the most about this is probably @microelly2

ping

As for your questions regarding TechDraw, I haven't got a lot of experience with it, and the workbench is still pretty new. Still you raise an interesting question with regard to representing terrains in TechDraw.

As for the other TechDraw-specific questions, I'd recommend you post those directly in the TechDraw forum (if you haven't already) to ensure the people who know the most about it get to see it.

Also, pinging @yorick just for good meausre:

ping

[microelly2]

• Is it in the actual version of FreeCAD possible to realize the Arch component "land" out of an ascii point cloud terrain model in order to integrate it into the section?
• Our decision might depend on if FreeCAD will enable LandXML/GML/CityGML integration or not. How is the development going in this regard?

We can import point clouds and generate terrain models as mesh or nurbs surfaces.


There are importers for a lot of formats,
LandXML/GML/CityGML were not requested before but they are not to far from GPX, so write the importer should be possible.

[Joel_graff]

I applied my idea to calculate bezier curves from a sketcher skeleton to our problem
it seems to work
here the two arc connection
there helper sketch only uses tangent lines
and the result sketch holds the arcs.

phpBB [video]

for the alignment I use the sketcher but for the arcs I calculate it by a special python method to avoid sketcher flipping.

That looks fantastic. Are those just simple arcs, or are they bezier curves?

The hassle I was running into was dealing with all the incidental geometry and how to go about inserting / deleting arcs. In retrospect, I may have been working too hard.

Out of curiosity, why separate the tangents from the arcs in a helper sketch? Just for convenience, or is there a computational or other advantage to doing it that way?

[emir]

We can import point clouds and generate terrain models as mesh or nurbs surfaces.

How can I do that?

[microelly2]

We can import point clouds and generate terrain models as mesh or nurbs surfaces.

How can I do that?

It depends on the data format of your points
here some examples:

phpBB [video]

phpBB [video]

phpBB [video]

fast and best reaults with regular elevation grids.

[wandererfan]

I'm still new to FreeCAD, but I've seen that the techdraw mode provides automatic section generation of Arch components. I also saw that annotations/labels can be added to a drawing which are always updated after editing the model.

It may be splitting hairs, but the Arch module does all the work in creating sections and TechDraw just displays the generated Svg code. There is a DrawViewSection function in TechDraw but it is aimed more at traditional mechanical drawing sections, although it will make a section view of Arch object(s) as well.

TechDraw can not apply Dimensions to an ArchSection. That must be done in the Arch module.

[emir]

It depends on the data format of your points

fast and best reaults with regular elevation grids.

How do I install the Geodat workbench?

The ascii file (100cm grid) has this format:

Code: Select all

ncols        500
nrows        500
xllcorner    2626000.000000000000
yllcorner    1254000.000000000000
cellsize     1.000000000000
 590.350 590.400 590.510 590.660 ... 

[microelly2]

It depends on the data format of your points

fast and best reaults with regular elevation grids.

How do I install the Geodat workbench?

The ascii file (100cm grid) has this format:

Code: Select all

ncols        500
nrows        500
xllcorner    2626000.000000000000
yllcorner    1254000.000000000000
cellsize     1.000000000000
 590.350 590.400 590.510 590.660 ... 

The geodart workbench you can install using the adon installer menu entry: Tolls -> Addon Manager
for your dataformat I have to write a new method,
this is not a problem
when I'm right the 6. line contains 250 000 heights for a regular grid?
this makes the tasks simple.