Release notes for Urban October 2020

The updates below have been made in ArcGIS Urban.

General

• The parcel exploration mode describes what is allowed on parcels. A parcel layer appears in the overview when zooming in toward ground.
• You can create plans and projects from a selection of parcels in the overview.
• Integration with ArcGIS Hub Premium community logins allows citizens to create projects without an Urban license.
• You can add integrated mesh layers as satellite existing buildings. They are masked out in the same way as the schematic existing buildings.
• You can explore and filter BIM data with the Building Scene Layer widget.
• Performance improvements include data import, plan creation, and procedural generation.
• Urban API is released as public beta.

Overview

• You can submit public feedback for plans and projects without location and additional user interface improvements around public feedback.
• The overview side panel is now attached to the side for a cleaner UI.
• The overview side panel is animated and slides in from the side.
• The appearance of detail cards has been updated, including a new open button.
• The scenario switcher design in the project and plan detail cards has been updated.
• You can show the number of results in the overview list. There is no longer a limit to the number of results when searching for plans and projects. Scrolling down the lists loads more results.
• When searching for an address, a parcel is automatically selected.

Plan editing

• You can validate zoning plans using any land use plan scenario.
• The allocation tool displays current distribution together with targeted distribution.
• There is a new scenario switching design and a separate scenario configuration dialog box.
• You can publish the existing scenario as a design visualization to the overview.
• You can publish the plan and scenario design context to the overview together with the scenario.
• Existing trees are published to the scenario design visualization web scene.
• A close button has been added to allow you to go back to the overview.
• A new selection type, Select-by-features, allows you to select features by any boundary shown in the map.
• Zoning and space use legends are now selection-sensitive and display the summary of what is selected in the view.
• The parcel inspector displays the allowed and built values next to each other for better comparison.
• Warning label icons in the view display the warning message when you hover over them.
• A diagonal fill style is used for overlay boundaries. This increases the readability of the view where overlay and zoning polygons overlap each other.
• General performance improvements include optional sync and editor tracking on plan feature services. You must turn this on in the plan settings when using ArcGIS CityEngine to import and modify urban design plans.
• Geometry operations are now available in a horizontal slider via the geometry button.
• Spatial indexes are rebuilt automatically when creating plans to increase performance of large plans.

Capacity indicators

• The UI for the capacity indicators panel has been updated with infographics.
• Capacity indicators are preserved on parcels when splitting and merging them and when using the grid tool.
• The automatic sum of existing values in scenarios uses values from scenario parcels (instead of from existing conditions).
• There is a warning label in the capacity side panel when additional development is lower than what is replaced.
• You can edit existing values of second order metrics directly in the plan's existing scenario and publish them to the overview.
• Rounding problems with gallons per day and pounds per day for second order metrics have been fixed.

Project editing

• A close button has been added that allows you to go back to the overview.
• Design visualization is now also visible in the Project editor.
• You can edit point symbols such as trees or vehicles directly after placing them in the view.
• There is a new scenario switcher design and a separate scenario configuration dialog box.

Urban rule

The rule for the procedural generation of plausible buildings has been further improved.

Improved rule for dwelling units

• General improvements and bug fixes of the building placing algorithm, which could cause some buildings not being built or irregular distances between building units, have been made.
• The warning messaging is improved including additional and more detailed warnings.
• There are always as many units built as fit on the parcel (while respecting minimal distance between units), even when the parcel is too small for the requested dwelling units density. In this case, a warning appears.
• Allowed FAR limits the number of built dwelling units.
• Allowed dwelling units density limits the number of built dwelling units.
• Bug fix: Setbacks are respected correctly. They do not lower the number of units if there is enough space inside the zoning envelope.
• Bug fix: Allowed coverage limits the number of built dwelling units correctly.

Other improvements

• Various minor bug fixes and improvements have been made.
• Bug fix: There is now correct handling when tiers start exactly at the top of a floor.

Data manager

• A close button allows you to go back to the overview.
• Spatial indexes are rebuilt automatically when importing features to increase performance of large datasets.

Deprecation

• The CurrentZoneTypeIDCache and OriginalZoneTypeIDCache fields are not populated. These fields are deprecated and will be removed in a future version.

Enhancements and bug fixes

• The grid tool has more reasonable defaults for U.S. metrics.
• The Project editor building height has more reasonable defaults for U.S. metrics.
• Editing permissions on plans and individual scenarios have been refined.
• Lasso selection selects all intersecting geometries (previously, it only selected those geometries within).
• The Dwelling Unit editor shows the area per household as information for space use types in the drop-down menu and as information in the dialog box.
• Better handling throughout the app of missing scenarios in plans and projects. For example, you can now have a plan or a project with only one or no scenario.
• The design of the feedback icons has been improved.
• UI Improvement: A custom scrollbar has been added to match the UI over multiple browsers and operating systems.
• UI Improvement: The design of unavailable buttons has been improved.
• UI Improvement: Restricted modal splits to sum up to 100 percent (or 0 percent).
• Bug fix: Land use warnings can now handle no geometries.
• Bug fix: Invalid space use types are rendered as red colored floors (previously, they were not rendered).
• Bug fix: The default value for minimum floor area for dwelling units has been fixed.
• Bug fix: The negative numbers with signs for RTL have been fixed.

Known limitations

For urban models created before the ArcGIS Urban October 2020 release, spatial indexes were not generated correctly for new feature layers. This can cause problems when working with a large parcel dataset (slow loading of features, in rare cases some parcels are not being displayed). You can resolve this problem by manually rebuilding spatial indexes on ArcGIS Online as described in the Urban June 2020 release notes. For urban models and plans created after the October 2020 release, this issue is resolved.