CAD approaches GIS | GeoInformatics March 2011

This month the new edition of Geoinformatics has arrived, with quite aggressive themes in CAD, GIS, remote sensing, data management; aspects that can no longer be seen in isolation.  In principle I present an analysis of one of the topics that interested me the most, in the end a summary of other topics of this print.

AutoDesk has serious plans to enter the SIG. 

A great article based on the interview with Geoff Zeiss, the specialist in geospatial subjects of AutoDesk that tells us about the plans of the company leads in this matter, with an integral vision of its users.

• The history of AutoDesk is long, although it bets on the geospatial issue since the launch of AutoCAD Map in 1996, just when Oracle launched the SDO.
• Then it was presented AutoCAD Civil 3D, in 2005, in the year that Google Earth appears.

The most outstanding for now is in the GIS division, which worked separately, this has been added to the large division called AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction). AutoDesk seeks to bet on BIM modeling in a comprehensive way, which in a few words is summarized as a standard in which we stop seeing loose vectors and see smart objects from the real world, such as houses, walls, parcels, roads, bridges, with characteristics beyond of 3D, including the cost and transactional history over time such as the appraisal, replacement cost, productivity, updates, etc.

It is not that AutoDesk is not already on the subject, what happens is that the positioning of the products revolve (outside of animation) around Design, Civil Engineering and Architecture. This is seen with the recognition that Inventor, Revit and Civil 3D have; But those solutions continue to be for design purposes, very little is done for the long-term maintenance of infrastructures by integrating data from different disciplines with products like AutoDesk Utiliy Design and Topobase. We will have to wait in which product the Galileo Project materializes, which is one of the most innovative puffs of the AutoDesk test laboratory.

We also assume, that from the versions of AutoCAD 2012 Which will be launched, we can see integration trends quite compatible with the I-model Of Bentley Systems, with different names but both betting on the same subject in which they benefit from the geospatial aspect the engineers, architects, surveyors and industrialists.

Although the field of utility is very wide, BIM is still a somewhat astral concept, it is difficult for us to stop seeing a parallelogram as a wall. Perhaps because the valuation of entities in Civil engineering is something superfluous and empirical, even in the real estate field a light bulb from an apartment is worth nothing for maintenance purposes; However, the issue is very interesting in the case of industrial plants where a valve can be worth US $ 10,000 and if its maintenance is not attended to, it can cause millions in losses.

So yes, we will see BIM applied to the CAD-GIS issue, and the topic that will keep us entertained will be smart cities (3D Cities), which is not so attractive for developing countries but with which it is developed in countries such as States. United, Germany, United Kingdom, Kuwait and China, we will see an irreversible trend for the following years. We talk more than seeing buildings modeled in three dimensions with realistic textures and clouds passing over the sky (that even Google can do it); It is about integrating into the design of an entire city environmental factors that are not widely applied in an integral way, such as the risk of natural disasters, climate change variables, natural resource management.

The subject is cutting edge, and if AutoDesk goes there, others will follow, if not in scope or vision, they will do so in compatibility. Cases such as the reconstruction of damages in Japan after the tsunami can be great examples, before the relocation of settlements with a territorial ordering approach in which intangible objects are mandatory variables of design and monitoring regulations.

Other topics of interest in the magazine

Other topics covered by this edition of Geoinformatics are still attractive. A pity that the Fluid version runs quite slow, it is better to press the button to display it in pdf, wait a while for it to load, then right-click and download it locally.

The potential of images in the geospatial field.  In this article it is visualized how, the traditional use that we have given to the images distances every day as the limits to where the remote sensing is arriving. 

WG-Edit, a new extension of gvSIG.  One more step for gvSIG in its diffusion in the geospatial market, which again in a magazine with such diffusion reflects the potentialities of this free software in personalization. It is quite a smoke, which materializes in an extension for the management of road infrastructure data in an area of ​​Italy and that we could see in the 6th. journeys.

Dreams in the capture of satellite data.  This topic is covered with an article in which we are told that as of 2014 we will be able to have world elevation data in high precision, if all goes well with the German TanDEM-X satellite launched in June 2010. We speak of 2 meters of relative vertical precision and up to 10 meters of absolute precision. The following image is a sample of the Tunupa Volcano and the Salar Uyuni area of ​​Bolivia.

How's ERDAS?  There is a very complete article on the potentialities of this software, both from ERDAS Imagine, the best known version in the world for GIS users, and LPS, which is an application aimed at companies that make photogrammetric products, the extensions for ArcGIS and Apollo which is a luxury tool for visualizing data from different sources, local, web map services and OGC standards. The article even summarizes some of the company's trends, among which its development in multiprocesses to improve the performance of the teams is striking. GPUs.

I recommend To keep an eye on the magazine, I have just summarized some of the ones that have caught my attention.