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P3D v5 Creating lots of tall buildings

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us-missouri
I have the Microsoft building footprint shapefile and it would be nice to somehow combine those shapes with height information and extrude them with ScenProc's new 3D building tool.

It wouldn't be hard to do a state at a time, but my problem is a good data source. The FAA's Daily Obstacle File isn't very useful but I came across a website called Emporis that has plenty of data on buildings, at least in Pensacola, Fla. where I began looking (see https://www.emporis.com/buildings/183733/indigo-condominiums-west-pensacola-fl-usa ). Can't seem to find anything beyond manually looking at each building for its location. If I could layer elevation data points over the building shapefiles in QGIS it would be pretty easy (I think) to eliminate all the smaller buildings and export the tall ones into Scenproc so I have more realistic cities than just the rectangular autogen I currently use.

Does anyone have any suggestions?
 

arno

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Hi,

If you find some dataset that contains the height of the buildings it should not be too hard to combine it with the footprints in scenProc. For example if you can find a DTM and DSM raster, you could calculate the height as the difference between them. But I haven't found good datasets for this yet for the areas I have been looking.
 

arno

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Hi,

With a quick search I found this dataset. I have not yet checked how accurate it is, but it looks interesting:


It seems Microsoft did also release some building footprint data with height attributes, but that is only for certain areas:

 
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491
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us-missouri
Hi,

With a quick search I found this dataset. I have not yet checked how accurate it is, but it looks interesting:


It seems Microsoft did also release some building footprint data with height attributes, but that is only for certain areas:

With that dataset I imagine I could just run different building heights for the different density types and accomplish a lot more with autogen than I could have just a few thousand 3D objects. Thanks!
 
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us-missouri
Looking at the manual... is it possible to assign six different AGNBuildingHeight categories using polygons from the shapefile I made from the data linked above using this method?

SetAGNBuildingHeight|Height_cat = "Low"|1.0;0.0;0.0;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|Height_cat = "Low-medium"|0.8;0.2;0.0;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|Height_cat = "Medium"|0.4;0.6;0.0;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|Height_cat = "Medium-high"|0.2;0.6;0.2;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|Height_cat = "High"|0.0;0.2;0.7;0.1
SetAGNBuildingHeight|Height_cat = "Very high"|0.0;0.1;0.2;0.7

EDIT: The "Height_cat" and "low/medium/high" tags are from the shapefile. Using the above script I am unable to get Scenproc to assign height data to any cells. Do I need additional steps like assigning a string type in AddAttribute or include FROMFILE or something?
 
Last edited:

arno

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Hi,

You'll have to add a cell attribute first, as the filter for the height step is done at cell level.

I would have to check if you can sample the polygon data at the center of the cell.
 
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491
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us-missouri
Hi,

You'll have to add a cell attribute first, as the filter for the height step is done at cell level.

I would have to check if you can sample the polygon data at the center of the cell.
Here is what I have, and when I run it, "Low" heights are applied to all cells.

AddCellAttribute|*|String;TYPE|Low
AddCellAttributeIfInside|Height_cat="Low-medium"|FROMFILE="Building Heights.shp"|String;TYPE|Low-medium
AddCellAttributeIfInside|Height_cat="Medium"|FROMFILE="Building Heights.shp"|String;TYPE|Medium
AddCellAttributeIfInside|Height_cat="Medium-high"|FROMFILE="Building Heights.shp"|String;TYPE|Medium-high
AddCellAttributeIfInside|Height_cat="High"|FROMFILE="Building Heights.shp"|String;TYPE|High
AddCellAttributeIfInside|Height_cat="Very high"|FROMFILE="Building Heights.shp"|String;TYPE|Very high

SetAGNBuildingHeight|TYPE = "Low"|1.0;0.0;0.0;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|TYPE = "Low-medium"|0.8;0.2;0.0;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|TYPE = "Medium"|0.4;0.6;0.0;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|TYPE = "Medium-high"|0.2;0.6;0.2;0.0
SetAGNBuildingHeight|TYPE = "High"|0.0;0.2;0.7;0.1
SetAGNBuildingHeight|TYPE = "Very high"|0.0;0.1;0.2;0.7

Information: Adding attribute TYPE with value Low-medium to cells Height_cat="Low-medium" that are inside FTYPE="POLYGON" AND (FROMFILE="Building Heights.shp")

I wonder if it would work if I made a separate shapefile for each category instead of having Scenproc look for "Height_cat"
 
Last edited:

arno

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This script looks OK, does the log show cell attributes have been added? Maybe you can show the log.
 
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Screenshot 2022-06-16 145316.jpg

Ignore the "AddAttribute" section, I was trying that when I snapped the screenshot, and it made no difference to the outcome.
 
Last edited:

arno

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Hi,

I see the problem now. The first filter in the AddCellAttributeIfInside step is the cells to which you want to add the attribute. So that should be *. The polygons to check should be the second filter, not the first.
 
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491
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That got it!

AddCellAttributeIfInside|*|FROMFILE="Building Heights.shp" AND Height_cat="Very high"|String;TYPE|Very high
 
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