Tuesday, November 28. 2006

3D Models Wow Crowd at AU

The most impressive demo of the opening plenary session (from a geospatial perspective) hosted by Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, was given by GMJ Design, a firm that helps architects visualize their design work. Autodesk released information about their 3D model of London in early November but reading about it and seeing it are two different things. The 3D model, accurate to 1:500 scale, was captured using aerial images and ground control points...not LIDAR...which is the only thing I could see would have been able to capture that much data on such a large scale. The application that they promoted was using the model for urban planning, a major concern for Londoners. However, everyone in the audience is thinking about security and high threat concerns, and the ability to provide a very detailed viewshed analysis of any part of the city.

GMJ hopes to create these models for other cities. Their business model is to license the data, all of it or part of it, for a variety of applications. Remember, this is a digital model created in Autodesk 3ds Max so much of the data capture work is already done and can interoperate with other Autodesk software. My question is how many other cities would want to license this kind of 3D model data? I am thinking lots.

More Stuff for MapGuide Open Source

There's no sign yet of the press release at Pacific Alliance Technologies or DM Solutions, arguably the leading open source geospatial services provider, but the announcement of planned integration of iVault 2007 and DM's Fusion has made the open source press and our website. iVAULT 2007 allows installation of MapGuide Open Source without programming. It will in time be integrated with DM's Fusion, a tool to extend MapGuide Open Source. DM is working with Pacific Alliance Technologies (PAT), a Canadian Autodesk reseller, of which I've never heard. This announcement is being made in conjunction with Autodesk University.

MapGuide Open Source Update

Here is the latest information on Autodesk's MapGuide open source software delivered at the MapGuide User's Group meeting duing the pre-conference meetings at Autodesk University in Las Vegas today:

MapGuide Product Road Map

MapGuide 1.0.2 – available now

MapGuide 1.1.0 – planned for availability in Dec. '06; features include:
Dynamic KML/KMZ support
Update to Feature Data Objects (FDO) 3.2
Dynamic Long Transaction support
Integrate provider into install
Tighter integration of API into .NET Framework

MapGuide 1.2.0 – release planned for April ‘07
Performance enhancements
Programatic load balanacing
Support for unmanaged data sources
Feature Join
MRU Tile Cache Management

White papers on FDO are now available at the Autodesk Geospatial website. FDO is Autodesk's technology to enable their geospatial applications (Autodesk Map 3D, Autodesk Civil 3D, Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise, and Autodesk Topobase™) to access and share spatial and nonspatial data.

Andrew Mackles, MapGuide Product Director, said that 23000 downloads of MapGuide Open Source have been made since its release. He believes that 1/3 of MapGuide customers are currently engaged in a pilot study.

Wednesday, December 7. 2005

AU-05 - More on "MapServer Enterprise" Clients

Update 12/8: While the developer toolkit for DWF is available, the source code for the plug-in is not open source.

After seeing the HTML (AJAX) client of "MapServer Enterprise" many times during the week, I finally asked to see the DWF plug-in version. They are as promised identical. Ok, there is one big difference: the HTML one has the blue scale/navigation tool (the blue exclamation point) and the plug-in version does not. However, you can hide the tool in the AJAX version by pushing it “off screen” if you like. (Apparently, many people like to do that since they find it ugly!)

I was not clear on is the status of the clients. They are "somewhat" open source. The core HTML viewer code is available but the DWF plug-in is not open source. (A developer toolkit is available.) Nor is the MapServer Enterprise Studio product which allows for the easy configuration of them. It basically “builds up” the XML that is fed into these apps to create the online page the user sees. In fact, I saw a demo of literally the same XML fed into each. They looked identical, save the blue exclamation point.

Why would a developer chose one over the other? DWF may be quicker with refreshes since the data is local, but has no extra functionality. It might be best used inside a company, where the download of a plug-in is no big deal. The HTML version requires no download and may be best used for consumer/citizen websites.

Both will in time be able to offer DWF files that can be taken into the field, though for now the HTML one does not have that functionality.

AU-05 - Understanding FDO

I tracked down the technical marketing manager for "Autodesk MapServer Enterprise" who explained the FDO technology in a way I could understand. He compared it to the power converters you use when you travel. You have this base and you plug-in different connectors based on the country you visit. The base is FDO, the connectors are the FDO providers. Both of these parts (save the providers for Oracle and SQL Server) are now open sourced by Autodesk.

The fact that Autodesk has open sourced this technology means that any developer can write a new provider. A provider accesses content. That content might be a file format (SHP) or a database (MySQL) or even another interface (WMS, WFS) or program (OGR, GDAL).

Tuesday, December 6. 2005

AU-05 - Autodesk Takes on DGN; Will it Open Source the Code?

Ralph Grabowski notes in his review of Autodesk University (soon to be available here, I suspect.):

One of Autodesk's GIS products has always had the ability to read DGN files created by MicroStation from Bentley Systems. A future release of AutoCAD will also read DGN files. At the AU show, there was some controversy over the source of the DGN translator. British CAD editor Martyn Day did the research, and found that "Autodesk reverse-engineered DGN itself, at the cost of something like $400,000 in a cleanroom environment. It's V8 DGN. Autodesk wonders if there would be any advantage in putting the source code up as open source, to keep the cost of development down." That's cheaper than outsourcing!

I've always felt that Autodesk kept the tools to import DGN and shape files in Map and not in AutoCAD simply to boost sales of the former. This note regarding Autodesk consideration of open sourcing its DGN reading technology is interesting on several fronts:

First, it follows the "we love open source" ideas eminating from the Infrastructure Solutions Division. It's be nice to see follow ons to the release of the latest Web mapping software to open source.

Second, it would compete with the Open Design Alliance, which offers libraries, for a fee. Recall that its head, Evan Yares, did not join the CAD technorati at Autodesk University this year.

Third, where would Autodesk put the code? The MapServer Foundation? Another foundation? Out on its own?