[Plugin] [CityGen] - Street Generator [WIP] (0.5.2a)

Dave R

Tusen takk.

Except for a few other words like lutefisk, lefse, gammelost and some boat-related words, I've about used up my Norwegian.

thomthom

Sounds like you got a good education in Norwegian traditions.

Dave R

I'm Norwegian by marriage. My 5 year old son knows more Norwegian than I do, though.

sepo

Visibility splays maybe too much to ask . It is relating to junctions and minimum amount of visibility required for vehicles to access main roads or roads general.It determines the building line and type of landscaping. I am thinking loud as I am hoping that tool will be more than for play. Here is just one example of it.
http://www.wakefield.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/6CB5C5B1-058A-4589-856E-97D1BDF8FABC/0/Highways_PlanningGuidanceNotes.pdf

Here is complete manual for designing streets
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/manforstreets/

Pavements, pedestrian and cycle routes are realy in public domain and not in private ownership (with few exception) and as such controlled by highway authority, that is at least in UK, and as such require particular standards.

Chris Fullmer

There is a balance between level of automation and level of reality I think. The more automated something is, the harder it is to make it create a realistic, true to life solution. To get a true solution, you can only automate small discreet tasks. It's impossible to feed a script a series of road centerlines and have it come up with a complete accurate city.

So I think the conversation that needs to happen is - exactly what variables would need to be known in order to design streets accurately from an urban designers view? The script would need to know the land use types of each street and block and then the designer would have to first input into the script how to react to every possible scenario.

I think something like this is do-able, but it would have to be very controlled what variables it needs. And I think it would need a LOT of data and parameters put into it before any reasonable results get output.

Just some thoughts. It would be interesting to develop, but an accurate automated city planning tool is a big undertaking.

Chris

thomthom

How would splay fit into the generator? It'd adjust each corner radius?
Or would it be some extra visualisation?

I could imagine this is something that could be extended further down the line. But it'd be a way off. Maybe something to go into a commercial plugin. Like Modulor's.

When you move from illustration to simulation things are getting a whole new dimension. There'd have to be a much greater 'knowledge' by the script to calculate thing properly. And that also means the people writing it needs some know-how to the subject.

kwistenbiebel

...as long as it remains easy to use, I would say.
Parametric solutions tend to become quite complicated in their attempt to be easy and complete. (e.g Revit...)

thomthom

@kwistenbiebel said:

...as long as it remains easy to use, I would say.
Parametric solutions tend to become quite complicated in their attempt to be easy and complete. (e.g Revit...)

Which I why we're keeping it simple for now. We can start looking into more complicated stuff later. And then I'm wondering if it'd be a separate module.

thomthom

I just updated the OP with a screenshot from 0.5.0 which I'm working on. Added variable street width.
I wonder if there should be an option to Radius: Distance From Corner. That you set the length from the corner where the radius should begin. Question is: what would be the desired default option?

mitcorb

Thomthom:
you asked what default distance from corner? In my city, the ordinances require a minimum setback from corner of 40 feet, or approx 12 meters. I believe there is some confusion here whether this should be measured from the intersection of the centerlines or from the intersection of the edges of the streets.
In practical terms, this minimum distance would not be safe if the streets have higher speed limits for vehicles. The setback distance should be established as a function of time as well as distance. But I digress.
Sincerely,
mitcorb

thomthom

@mitcorb said:

you asked what default distance from corner?

No, if people preferred to set the radius of the corner (from the edge corner) or to specify the distance away from the edge corner to where the radius will begin.
Currently it simply rounds the edge corner by a given radius.

@mitcorb said:

In practical terms, this minimum distance would not be safe if the streets have higher speed limits for vehicles. The setback distance should be established as a function of time as well as distance. But I digress.

At the moment this would be up to the user to work out. Calculating the radius by the estimated traffic speed would be an advanced feature for later.
At the moment this is as a simple tool for quick visualisation. Mostly for city area, so you'd just enter the average radius you want.

Chris Fullmer

I agree, simple radius is great.

And I forgot, did we decide that the street generator should create the sidewalks, or is that going to bein the block module? Or de we plan on their being a sidewalk module?

Chris

Jernej Vidmar

Maybe It wouldn't be bad if Street Generator would automatically assign different corner radius based on width of the roads connecting? Something like (in pseudocode):

if both_roads == 6m
   radius = 4m
elsif road1 == 6m && road2 == 12m
   radius = 5m
else #both roads == 12m
   radius = 6m
end

just an idea..

Chris Fullmer

Thats a good idea! I think it could give some really interesting results

Chris

PS - After about 48 hours of straight pain, I think I finally got tortoise to work on Vista 64 bit with Google code - woohoo!!!!!! So we'll look into goole code and compare it with the others. I wouldn't mind one that had a better forum built in and maybe even an IRC channel. But perhaps I'm dreaming? Thanks for the help so far!

mitcorb

Thomthom and Chris:
The way you guys are throwing ideas back and forth-- are we witnessing the first global collaboration on Sketchup plugins or have I missed a bunch of stuff? I say more power to you, and the more collaborators the better for the community. You guys are awesome.
mitcorb

thomthom

@unknownuser said:

Maybe It wouldn't be bad if Street Generator would automatically assign different corner radius based on width of the roads connecting? Something like (in pseudocode):

I guess then we'd need some input to approximately it'd be calculated.
Not even sure if the radius depends on the road width? (I'm not trying to make this completely accurate to reality, but a simplified approximation.)

@chris fullmer said:

And I forgot, did we decide that the street generator should create the sidewalks, or is that going to bein the block module? Or de we plan on their being a sidewalk module?

Don't think we agreed. I just threw the question out there.
I think I favour that the module that takes the block and splits it into building footprints does that. Maybe, what the street generator can do is instead of making just the block face, also define the sidewalk face.

@chris fullmer said:

PS - After about 48 hours of straight pain, I think I finally got tortoise to work on Vista 64 bit with Google code - woohoo!!!!!! So we'll look into goole code and compare it with the others. I wouldn't mind one that had a better forum built in and maybe even an IRC channel. But perhaps I'm dreaming? Thanks for the help so far!

Good work Chris.
I still haven't had time to look into the various solutions. (Ben struggling with my website that suddenly went offline. apparently lots of stuff has expired without any prior notification... grumble )

@mitcorb said:

I say more power to you, and the more collaborators the better for the community.

Yes. More collaborators please!
Man, after watching that Google Wave Demo I keep thinking how nice it'd be if that service existed now...

remus

@thomthom said:

Man, after watching that Google Wave Demo I keep thinking how nice it'd be if that service existed now...

I kind of wish i hadnt seen it now, then i wouldnt keep thinking how good it would be

Chris Fullmer

@unknownuser said:

Don't think we agreed. I just threw the question out there.
I think I favour that the module that takes the block and splits it into building footprints does that. Maybe, what the street generator can do is instead of making just the block face, also define the sidewalk face.

I think I'm tending to want a separate sidewalk module. It would accept a single face as input and then inset all edges to create the sidewalk. This way it would be easy to make different sidewalk generator modules. So a simple prototype that does an offset can be made quickly, and then others that add scorelines, materials, streetposts, random components, etc, could be added later.

Chris

thomthom

The street module would have to deal with the rounded street corners. If it's doing a blind offset you'll end up with some strangle lines at the corners. I'd think that the offsets would most likely end up having sharp corners. (which I think is better for the parcel generator?)

Chris Fullmer

Hmm, that might require some modeling for me to think through. I am thinking that it should be the sidewalk generators that decides what type of inside corners to make for itself. Perhaps it could be given a face and also the centerlines, or the offset street edges(pre curving) so it could use those if needed to calculate its inside edges.

Again, maybe I need to model it so I can think it through.

Chris