3DCity: Urban Planning and Design

Template: 3D City - Design

Version: 1.1
Date: July 19, 2013
Map templates and workflows are ArcGIS resources that can be used to help create 2D / 3D maps and web map
applications with your GIS data. These templates and workflows can be applied as the foundation to create similar maps.
This workflow covers how you can design new 3D buildings in CityEngine using procedural rules. Starting point is a
Geodatabase with 3D GIS features that was created in part 1 and 2 of a series of workflows on 3D City Modeling showing
you how to:

Prepare your GIS data for generating 3D city features

Create 3D city features like 3D multipatch building shells and 3D streets from existing GIS data
Maintain 3D multipatch building shells
Design new 3D buildings using procedural rules (this workflow: includes master planning and comparing designs)
Start doing Master Planning
Perform 3D City analysis such as shadow and visual impact
Publish 3D CityEngine Web Scenes to ArcGIS Online

Please have a look for the full series on the 3DGIS and CityEngine Resource Centers.
Use case: Urban Planning
As we saw in part 1, 2 and 3 of this series, CityEngine can be used to create a 3D City Model using existing GIS data. The
ability to easily create 3D urban scenes is one of the key strengths of CityEngine. Another is the ability to design in 3D
and this can be very helpful in Urban Planning.
The workflow below describes the process of planning/designing a new city block in our Philadelphia example city using
procedural rules.
Prerequisites:

CityEngine 2012.1
If you dont have a license, go here to get a trial version
Pay attention to user interface information (especially how to navigate) when installing
3D City Creation project

Loading the example:

After installation, startup CityEngine:
If you didnt do so already, import the 3D City Creation project into your workspace: File -> import -> Project -> existing
project into workspace. Search for the 3DCity_Creation.zip archive file.

Import existing project (as archive) into workspace

Workflow steps:
1. Loading a scene
This example comes with 3 scenes: the 3DCity scene we created in part 2 of this series, a prepared design scene
called 3DCityDesign.cej and a Master Planning scene called 3DCityMasterPlanning.cej

Please open the 3DCityDesign.cej scene first to see a final design.

2. Selecting the area of interest

Ok, lets try and create a new design. Close this project and open the 3DCity.cej project. We are interested in
redeveloping a city block in the middle of Philadelphia. Select this block (left mouse button, drag right to left)
and cut it out (Edit->Cut).

Well paste it back into the scene as separate layers in case we want to compare later with the new design (click
the Scene window and paste (Edit->Paste)).
3. Sketching new buildings
There are 2 ways in CityEngine to create 3D buildings:
- Manual sketching
- Generate from parcels or building footprints
Lets have a look at manual sketching first.
Click on the Polygonal Shape Creation Tool in the CityEngine tool bar:

Draw a base for your building

Extrude it upwards

Cut along the roof to create.

.step backs by pushing down

Apply the Generic Modern Buildings rule to your 3D sketch and select the Envelop rule as start rule.

You can check building parameters such as FAR and GFA, in the Inspector window. Scroll down in the Inspector
to the reports tab.

To generate detailed facades,

Go the Inspector window (Window->Show Inspector)
Scroll down to the Generic Modern Facades rule and
Toggle the Generate Facades parameter to on

Manually sketching is a very intuitive way to create 3D buildings in CityEngine and as you can see, you can apply
rules to your 3D sketch. Another way of create 3D buildings is to apply rules directly to parcels or building
footprints and generate the 3D geometry completely procedurally. Well see how that works in the next section.
Just delete the sketch you created now and on to parceling!
4. Generate new parcels
First thing we need to do is generate new parcels in this location as basis for the new design. In this case we
want for 4 new big parcels. CityEngine can do this for you:
- select one of the adjoining streets
- open the Inspector window
- go to the Block tab
- and set shapeCreation to true

CityEngine will generate new parcels for this block. Now as youll notice, by default, we get more than 4 parcels.
Simply change it by changing rule parameters such as minimum and maximum parcel size.

- select the new parcels

- open the Inspector window
- select the dynamic shapes tab
- go to the Block parameters
- change lotAreaMin to 3000, lotAreaMax to 5000 and set irregularity to 0
- if needed you can align the parcels better with the terrain through Layer->Align Terrain To Shapes

5. Apply an urban planning rule

In the next step we are going to apply a rule to the new parcels, to generate 3D massing models based on typical
zoning laws. Virtually every municipality in the developed world has zoning laws which describe permitted land
use, lot size, building heights, density, setbacks, and other aspects of property use.
CityEngine rules can be used to quickly visualize different 3D design scenarios by changing the rule parameters.
A great feature of the software is the ability to do instant reporting of zoning parameters such as Floor Area
Ration (FAR) or density, Lot Coverage and Open Space Area for each of the design scenarios. These can then be
easily checked against the permitted values in the zoning laws.
- have the 4 parcels selected and drag / drop the Generic Modern Buildings.cga rule on the parcels.
- select the Parcel rule as start rule (if needed) and click Ok
- this will generate 4 mass models with certain zoning parameter settings.

In this case, we want to increase the density (FAR) on each lot but also create nice open spaces. You can
manually play with different combinations of the rule parameters or use the Styles functionality to quickly
generate a predefined design.
- select 1 building and open the Inspector window
- open the report tab and you can see the Floor Area Ratio, Lot Coverage etc for this design.
- now you can start designing in 3D by changing the rule parameters such as Nr of Floors, Setbacks and Layout.
- check the reporting for impact of design decisions

6. Styles
Another good feature is the Styles functionality. Styles are basically predefined sets of rule parameters which
allow you to quickly switch between different design proposals.
- select the parcel/building
- open the Inspector window
- click the Styles button and select a style
- do this for all buildings so it looks similar to the image below.

Note: to have the original rule file driving the Styles, right click in the Inspector on a rule parameter and select reset all attributes of
Generic Modern Building. This resets all the parameters you might have changed previously to values defined in the rules.

7. Fine-tuning the design

With the base design in place, we can bring it back into ArcGIS for further analysis such as shadow and visual
impact.

Shadow impact

Visual impact

Note: to learn about shadow and visual impact analysis in ArcGIS, please see 3DCity Analysis part of this series

If we are happy with the analysis results, we can further fine-tune our design in CityEngine. First we can enable
faade generation:
- in the Inspector, scroll down to the Generic Modern Facades rule and set Generate_Facades to true

This generates detailed 3D facades on the massing models. The facade rule also supports Styles so click the
Styles button in the Inspector and apply the styles so it looks like the image below.

To finish off, we can enable the green space generation:

- in the Inspector, scroll down to the Green Space rule and set Generate_Green_Space to true

Design done! Looking at the final result, we see we have a density (FAR) of almost 6, nearly 50% lot coverage
and the midday sun is nicely coming into the open space.

And if needed, changes can be made at any stage of the design process. For example, it appears that the office
building and the residential building are too close together and the residential building is shading the office
building. Simple change the Setback from the Boundary parameter.

Now we can export this design and bring it back into ArcGIS for visualization in a larger geographic extent.

Note: to learn more about how to export 3D content from CityEngine to ArcGIS, please see the 3DCity Maintenance part of this series.

Enjoy
The 3D /CityEngine team