CityEngine 2014.1 Release Notes

Leaf shape exporting & reporting

Sounds technical but is very powerful. This version allows you to export so-called leaf shapes (shapes generated by a rule) as individual GIS features to the Geodatabase, including export of report values as attributes. When can this be useful? For example when you are interested in visual impact or solar exposure of a building. Sample the building in CityEngine, export the building panels and analyze in ArcGIS.

For more information, check out the 3DCity: Analysis workflow on the resource center.

List editor for related tables

We have improved the UI for viewing and editing related tables imported from the Geodatabase. If you import a feature class with a related table, you can edit the attributes of the related table easily in a list editor.

General enhancements

This release includes many enhancements in CGA. We are introducing new functions & operations such as isClosedSurface and deleteHoles(). We also improved the Collada and multipatches (FGDB) importers support holes and fixed numerous issues making this release even more stable.

Improvements and fixes

• Static Models: enhanced transparency & normal handling object attributes to fix common Collada incompatibilities.

• CGA changes:
  • New Features:
  • deleteHoles() operation
  • geometry.nHoles function
  • geometry.isClosedSurface function
  • listTerminate function
  • Hole support: all operations and Collada reader support polygons with holes now and many bugfixes.
  • Color operation: support for setting opacity.
  • Better support for nonplanar polygons (interpolate instead of planarize).
  • Better support for texture coordinates and vertex normals (interpolate instead of delete).
  • Increased defaults for recursion detection.
  • Made float-to-string conversion independent of locale.
• Model Exporters:
  • All Exporters: Re-added support to only export the initial shape geometry.
  • CityEngine WebScene Exporter: Added settings to control the vertex/vertex normals/texture coordinate merge precisions.
• Shape/Model Importers:
  • Collada Reader: Added hole support.
  • FileGDB Importer: Added support for holes in Multipatches. Added support for textures with alpha in Multipatches.

Fixes

• CGA Bugs (check CGA change log in the help manual for all details)
  • Fixed some race-conditions and illegal memory access crashes.
  • Made convexify operation more consistent.
  • Fixed points/edge support in alignScopeToGeometry operation.
  • Fixed some cases which led to open volumes in envelope operation.
  • Fixed memory leak in setback and shape{L|U|O} operations.
  • Fixed behavior for unknown/unloadable assets in assetInfo, assetsSortRatio and assetsSortSize functions.
  • Fixed nan handling in a number of operations.
  • Fixed non-';'-terminated string lists handling in listRange function.
  • CGA compiler: fixed bugs regarding import (attribute protection) and extends (attribute propagation).
  • AssetErrors: report warnings from geometry conversion of inserted assets.
• Export Bugs:
  • CityEngine WebScene Exporter:
    • Fixed texture transparency issue when exporting geometry imported from a FileGDB.
    • Fixed locale-dependent number to JSON conversion issue.
    • Fixed wrong rounding on floating-point object attributes and CGA report values.
    • Fixed terrain texturing precision issue on large terrains.
    • Avoid writing illegal/empty geometry but raise error instead.
• FileGDB Exporter:
  • Fixed an FileGDB "update" bug with differing existing and incoming geometry types which could lead to feature class corruption.
  • Fixed a bug which ignored selected terrain layers when exporting.
  • Improved the FileGDB graph export/import round trip.

• Shapefile Exporter:
  • Improved the shapefile shape and graph round trip.

• UI Bugs:
  • Model Hierarchy: removed import prefix from node label.
  • Model Hierarchy: fixed "model not shown on reopening Model Hierarchy" issue.
  • Model Hierarchy: fixed "rule changes are not picked up when in Inspect Model Mode (regenerate)" issue.
  • Fixed silent overwrite of cga files if a new CGA file with the same name is created.
  • CGA Editor: fixed rename (refactoring) bug which broke import statements.
  • Navigator: fixed cga file rename bug which broke import statements.
  • Removed errors caused by "Disable shadows during camera navigation" preferences option.

• Import Bugs:
  • Collada Importer: Fixed a regression where a texture is not read if its image path is prefixed with "./".

• FileGDB Importer:
  • If "Import Fields from Related Tables" is on, lists were not terminated with a semicolon.
  • Fixed a bug where feature classes containing attributes with <Null> values did not correctly import (NIM102484).

• KMZ Importer: Improved robustness towards large KMZ files with illegal geometry (NIM097148).

• Terrain importer now correctly shows negative values for certain floating point datasets.

• Streets:
  • Fixed streetWidth(XXX) reporting wrong values on lots after street width changes.
  • Deleting street graph edges between blocks no longer produces many LotCorner StartRules.
  • Valency of street nodes without shapes now correct.
  • Using generate bridges on two layers at the same time no longer causes errors.

• Inspector Bugs:
  • When a user clicks to edit an attribute, then clicks aways without editing, the source no longer changes to user.
  • Import rule hierarchy was displayed incorrectly in the Inspector.

• Python Bugs:
  • Terrain import bug: wrong elevation range corrected.
  • Script-based Exporter: fixed "ce.getOID(model) in script based export finishModel() method not giving back proper OID" issue.
  • Script-based Exporter: fixed empty reports issue