Autodesk Vehicle Tracking Software 2014

Dan Philbrick, senior product line manager in the infrastructure division at Autodesk, spoke with AECWeekly regarding the company’s new Autodesk Vehicle Tracking 2014 software for vehicle simulation, based on field-proven technology assets recently acquired from Savoy Computing Services in the UK.

The new software for vehicle tracking allows transportation professionals doing design and planning to do what is called “swept path analysis” in the design process, predicting vehicle movement.

“We can predict how a vehicle goes through a highway system, roundabout, intersection, parking lot, etc., looking at the safety characteristics of the interchange,” explained Philbrick. “You may need to get emergency vehicles in and around a site, which is complicated by how they turn and negotiate a site, and you have to determine appropriate lane width for emergency vehicles.” Getting large trucks into a loading dock is a huge challenge, thus this analysis can be used when incorporating loading docks into site design.

What Vehicle Tracking Software allows you to do is analysis as part of the design and planning phases. Customers needed to be able to do this type of analysis earlier in the design process, as it becomes more expensive to do the further on in the design/construction process.

“If you’re using Vehicle Tracking Software with Civil 3D you can leverage this technology in a detailed design process and actually track 3D traffic characteristics, can view it in 3D, record an AVI for presentation, and look at vertical clearances,” said Philbrick.

Roundabouts have become really popular for a traffic exchange mechanism in the U.S. and Europe, replacing the four-way stop intersection. Depending on whether highway, intersection or urban site, the tracking capability in Vehicle Tracking includes a roundabout capability that then leverages the swept path analysis to design the roundabout according to the standards of the vehicle path. There are specific regulations around vehicles negotiating roundabouts that Vehicle Tracking Software provides.

“If you are leveraging Civil 3D it creates the Civil 3D corridor model directly as a roundabout and you can evaluate that as 3D,” said Philbrick, adding that the Vehicle Tracking incorporates all design vehicle standards as well as safety standards.

Every country has these design vehicle standards, for the type of vehicle, typical lanes, etc. that are included in a library of vehicles as part of Vehicle Tracking.

“When we do swept path analysis, the software then calculates the track of the vehicle and also we look at sight line distances for safety based on speed,” Philbrick explained. “Do I have the appropriate sight lines for safety? These are all based on design standards that users can either leverage what’s built into the product or build it themselves, adding vehicle types, etc.”

Autodesk Vehicle Tracking 2014 has the following features (from the press release):

• Tight integration within AutoCAD Civil 3D, including 3D surface tracking and native civil object creation.
• Vehicle animations that can follow 3D surfaces to test for vertical clearance requirements.
• Features to easily analyze and visualize the movements of steered vehicles, light rail vehicles and aircraft, as well as design car parking areas and roundabouts within a drafting (AutoCAD) or design (AutoCAD Civil 3D) environment.
• The ability to more quickly evaluate 3D models of alternatives in order to optimize designs such as roundabouts, intersections, and loading bays for safety and standards compliance.

Vehicle Tracking Software 2014 integrates with the following Autodesk products: Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D, Autodesk AutoCAD Architecture, Autodesk AutoCAD Plant 3D, Autodesk AutoCAD Map 3D and Autodesk AutoCAD Utility Design.

Tags: 3D, 3D cities, AEC, architects, architecture, Autodesk, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk University, Autodesk Vehicle Tracaking Software 2014, BIM, building design, building information modeling, Cloud, construction, design, engineering, infrastructure

Categories: AEC, architecture, AutoCAD, Autodesk, BIM, building information modeling, Cloud, construction, engineering, infrastructure, integrated project delivery, mobile

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