Product Updates:What’s new?

These past few months, OpenCities released some new, cool stuff!
In our January Release, we introduced a set of new features and improvements such as:

• Improved iModel configuration
• Multi-select features and reporting
• iOS fixes
• ‘Locate me’ for mobile
• ShowRoom idle animations

Read all these on our blog post Update here: OpenCities Update, January 2023

What’s new?

Past few months OpenCities released some new cool stuff…

Error Pages

With the next update, we will release a new Error notification feature. From now on, if we experience difficulties, we will notify the users by showing an “Error page” prior to showing the project view or the OpenCities editor. Depending on the severity of the issues we’re experiencing, we will show two types of pages:

•  One that notifies the users that the project might not run as expected (backgrounds may not load, a project might be very slow, objects might be missing), where the user can still choose to access the project to view it or work on it.
• The other, is where the user is notified that we are experiencing issues but without the option for the user to enter the editor or view the project. The latter will be shown only when OpenCities is completely down and can not be reached, which we hope will never happen.

In both cases, the users will be notified that something is wrong, that our team is working on it, and can expect a fix for the problems as soon as possible.

Auto-Populate search values for Advanced Query

The Advanced Query Tool now automatically populates the possible values within the properties values list. The filtering of possible values is executed as the user chooses values for the properties. It is based on previous selections and the list will keep refining based on these selections.

This offers a better user experience, as the user does not need to know exactly what they need to search for. This Advanced Query Tool is in a pilot phase and can be available to users on request.

Linked Document Download

Advanced Query and Object selection searches are also available in the Advanced Query tool which now enables ProjectWise documents related to the Query executed in OpenCities to be brought up.

This way, OpenCities becomes a single access point for both the graphical representation and the documentation in ProjectWise with the available downloading option for the documents, providing any stakeholder quick access to all documents related.

Siemensstadt Square Project: A Twin in Berlin

Bentley Systems and Siemens are collaborating on a massive project in Berlin, an entire city district of over 70 hectares called, appropriately, Siemensstadt Square (Siemens City). By 2035, this space will be occupied by industrial operations, commercial activities, research, education, and social infrastructure. The challenge is to create a sustainable, inclusive living environment while continuing industrial operations. It’s an exciting urban infrastructure project

To achieve that vision, Siemens is building the district twice – first in the digital world and then in the real one. During the planning and designing phase, right through to construction and operations, a digital twin of the city will enable all stakeholders from engineers and architects to surveyors and construction workers to collaborate and connect. By giving the general public access to the digital twin, the city planners can also facilitate dialogue with the community, taking their concerns and ideas into account as construction progresses.

This is how we see the future of Siemensstadt leveraging the power of interactive 3D infrastructure digital twins. That’s how exciting infrastructure can be.

Watch for yourself in this video or visit the project link Siemensstadt Square project

Bentley’s Year In Infrastructure (YII):OpenCities projects Winners and Finalists

In this year’s Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure (YII), Sydney Airport won the Facilities, Campuses and Cities award. They outlined a passionate presentation to the jurors on how Digital Twin has introduced operational efficiency within their workforce across the various departments, creating a collaborative working environment and increasing their confidence in making informed decisions within seconds. They justified savings of $ 1m AUD on just a handful of use cases, and predict that the savings will increase as more colleagues and data sources are connected to create an evergreen, holistic digital twin. They plan to rollout out the solution to ~500 users in 2023. Congratulations on your big win!

The Kaunas University of Technology, Center for Smart Cities and Infrastructure, also a Finalist in the same category, gave an outstanding presentation on their Kaunas Digital Twin. This Digital Twin is a continuous project focusing on the digitalization of the built environment by integrating different digitalization technologies and applying them to practical real-world tasks.

Thank you both for sharing your success with our products and your successful implementation of your Digital twins.

You can watch both presentations here:

• FACILITIES, CAMPUSES, AND CITIES – Sydney Airport
• FACILITIES, CAMPUSES, AND CITIES – Kaunas University of Technology

What’s new?

iTwin-enabled ShowRoom is now Released!

The latest ShowRoom version has officially been released. ShowRoom can now fully support iModels while remaining on the same functionality level as the online project view.

The data loading time has been significantly improved and datasets being loaded from disks are supported. The new ShowRoom provides a more reliable experience in events, such as exhibitions, and features a friendly UI.

Dublin Use case demo in OpenCities Planner

The City of Dublin, Ireland, is working along with Bentley Systems and OpenCities Planner to develop city-scale digital twins to support city-level decision-making, stakeholder engagement, and operations.

Jamie Cudden, Smart City Program Manager, Dublin City Council, said: “The impact of the pandemic has forced cities like Dublin to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Working with Microsoft and Bentley we are reimagining how interactive virtual environments and digital twins can support citizens to engage from the safety of their own homes on new development projects in their local communities. Working with these technology partners, we are building an adaptable and scalable solution based on Microsoft Teams and Bentley’s OpenCities Planner that will set the standard for the future of planning and public engagement in cities.”

The Dublin City Council mainly focuses on 4 themes namely:

1. DCU – Campus Research and Development
2. Emergency services planning
3. Public Consultation and Planning
4. Transportation & Air quality

Watch the video of Dublin’s City Digital Twin here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCdehJ2VTAo

OpenCities project finalist for Bentley’s Year In Infrastructure (YII)

We are more than thrilled to announce that Sidney Airport is a finalist in YII in the Facilities, Campuses, and Cities category for their project “Maps@SYD”. Watch the video here: Maps@SYD

This is a well-deserved nomination identifying the great work being done in this Airport Solution lighthouse project.

What’s new?

3DTiles reality data and web-ready scalable meshes from ContextShare

OpenCities Planner has now an improved integration with ContextShare. Users can access 3D tiles reality data and web-ready scalable meshes from ContextShare through our Data Manager and configure them as Reality models. The data is easily accessible from ContextShare, without the need of copying them, providing an additional improved performance.

Redesign of the Attribute window

This new design of the Attributes window improves the user experience, as well as providing better filtering possibilities for the Admin users of OpenCities Planner.

Filtering on the attributes coming from either a Spatial source or iModel, can be done by filtering on the attribute group level or specific attributes. The benefits here are that it increases attributes’ readability, information appears structured, and the user can curate the visual outcome of the groups of properties.

Search & Query improvements

The OpenCities team is progressively developing the implementation of a user-friendly Search and Query tool. Additional advancements taken place lately, include friendly labels, case-insensitive search, zoom extends to cover all search hit results, graphical adjustments and enhancements, along with an automatic attributes list filtering helping users to create good searches.

The Search and Query tool is under working process so it is currently available as a hidden feature and can be enabled with Java scripting after the user’s request.

Choose which iModel to upload into

With this new workflow, you can make new versions of an iModel.  The iModel you have selected will become the default one for the next upload you do.

This enables updating your iModels without the need to reconfigure them whenever you wish to add more data to them.

Draw Tools

With our new Draw tools you can now draw Polygon and Line features in the Editor. Quick sketching and annotation are enabled, providing a simplified workflow for simple vector additions to your project.

TerraForm Improvements

These latest improvements in our TerraForm tool provide better rendering of the control points of the TerraForm shape. You can also easily modify nodes after creating them, by clicking the line to add a new one or choose ALT + Click to remove one.

This offers better control to the user and it reduces the need to re-draw a polygon from scratch when editing.

ShowRoom Updates

We have been developing a new version of the ShowRoom application, which will support iModels and be consistent with the online version of OpenCities at all times.

It supports local map datasets, but project content such as POIs, uploaded 3D-models and iModels, and GIS-services such as WMS will require an active internet connection. As reality models and background data typically hold the most heavy content for a project, the ShowRoom application will offer increased performance over the online version for exhibitions and situations where the internet access is unstable. It also features a brand new user-friendly GUI. An Alpha version has been released to pilot users for review and feedback.

Unit per pixels for Reality Models

Introducing you the Unit Per Pixel (UPP) feature, an advanced visualization setting that allows you to control what data is being rendered. The Unit Per Pixel setting offers a better control of Reality model rendering where the default Unit Per Pixel calculation is non-optimal.

This new Unit Per Pixel is aimed to be used for advanced  situations if there is need to tweak your mesh model to either look better or load faster.

You can read more here: Unit per pixels for Reality Models

What’s new?

New Release with lots of exciting Updates and new Features!

Our latest OpenCities Release brought some interesting new Features and Updates:

• A new, simplified workflow that allows you to drag and drop your files from your system directly into our OpenCities editor Interface
• A unified User management across projects
• ‘Information’ option for Sources is now available
• New, easily accessible button for ‘Support’

Read our latest Blog Post on these and more noteworthy Updates and news: OpenCities Update, February 2022

OpenCities Planner Webinar

On November 30^th we held an OpenCities Planner Live Webinar sharing our Latest Updates and News and an introduction to some exciting upcoming releases. We covered topics such as:

• Start Page
• Bentley Identity Management System IMS login
• Mobile UX enhancements
• iModel enhancements
• 3D models uploads
• New styling for Dialogue submissions
• Latest DataManager news

Watch the Webinar here: OpenCities Planner Webinar, November 2021

You can also have a look at our Blog Post related to some of these Updates: OpenCities Planner Update, November 2021