Coverage Area - Transparency

 Infraworks Coverage areas are great for defining work area / easement but some time you would like the area to be transparent. This is possible in Infraworks by changing the Alpha channel of the colour that defines your coverage area.

 The pink coverage area defines the area of work.

The colour setting of the Coverage area is set with an Alpha channel of 250, by changing the alpha channel the transparency of the coverage area changes.

 

 The Alpha channel is set to 100 in the image above to give a result in the image below of a transparent appearing coverage area.

Magic of PI and rotation of City furniture

Infraworks can take a 2d block in CAD software and create a 3d model with the easy of converting the block into to a GIS data set. 
The workflow for Infraworks City Furniture that is from a SDF with a value the represents it orientation in space. Mapexported angle are convert from Degrees to radian during the export process.  Infraworks does not have the following expression Functions:

• PI (3.141592653589793)

or

• RAD2DEG

Therefore to convert radian to degree is a bit of rough approach.

PI as a fraction is 245850922/78256779= 3.141592653589793
Radians to Degrees is "Segment Orientation" x (180 / PI)

A survey file with multiple blocks that represent each feature on a site. I want those site features in my Infraworks model. You can do a simple mapexport from Civil 3d or Map 3d and create a SDF file with each block classified by either layer name or block name. This simple process is great for feature elements that don't had a rotation. If survey file has not got the rotation that represents its true orientation a manual process will need to be done in Civil 3d or Map 3d. Below is a survey block of a traffic light with a rotation that represents it orientation.

Mapexport with the rotation of the block exported. The exported values for rotation end up in radians.

 Example of the traffic lights imported into Infraworks as City furniture with the Z rotation not yet assigned. Notice the traffic lights not oriented correctly.

PI or RAD2DEG are not recognised as expression values therefore to convert radian to degree is a bit of rough approach.

PI as a fraction is 245850922/78256779= 3.141592653589793
Radians to Degrees is "Segment Orientation" x (180 / PI)

In in the expression editor this would looks like

 ROTATION  *  (180 / (245850922/78256779))

Example of the traffic lights imported into Infraworks as City furniture with the Z rotation assigned. the traffic lights are now orientated correctly  

Navisworks - Exporting Clash Test

Navisworks Manage has a tool called Clash Detective. You can import and export your saved clash test to share between projects.. I discovered today that you can only export clash test that are set up using sets. Both selection A and selection B need to be Sets for you to export you clashes tests. I found that if you don't set your tests up this way you'll get a back xml with out the clash tests.

• Below is an example of the test with selection A and Selection B as  Sets.