Bubbles and Towers

This week I played around with the idea of using CityEngine to view the coverage areas produced by cellphone towers in 3D. This is just a quick example to see what it would look like.

As always, getting your hands on data was quite an exercise. I eventually found a spreadsheet with the locations and types of towers points in the study area. Unfortunately the towers point data didn't have any ranges associated with them. After consulting a reliable source (Wikepedia) I very carefully estimated (guessed) the range of each tower. This is the point where I probably have to mention that this example was done purely for research purposes and that none of the ranges are correct....as far as I know.

The points were plotted from an Excel spreadsheet in ArcMap and converted to a point feature class. The feature class points were interpolated to accept the z-value of an elevation raster of the area. Next I added a Range field to specify the maximum range of each tower according to its type. The ranges varied between 100 - 800 meters.

Range Bubbles

I used the ranges as the buffer field for the 3D Buffer tool in ArcScene to create multipatch bubbles of the maximum ranges for each tower. The range bubbles were imported into CityEngine and a rule file was used to set their colors and transparencies.

Towers

The points were converted to the different tower models according to type in CityEngine. The tower models were downloaded from Trimble 3D Warehouse.

Tower 1

Tower 2

Tower 3

Tower 4

A CGA rule was created to generate the models and exaggerate the size for better visibility. The rule uses the i (geometry) asset tool to plot the appropriate tower model and then re-scales it using the s(x,y,z) tool.

The Code:

attr Structure_Type = "Rooftop"


Lot--> case Structure_Type == "Rooftop":
Antenna
case Structure_Type == "Camouflage":
Camouflage 
case Structure_Type == "Monopole":
Monopole
case Structure_Type == "Lattice":
Lattice
else: Camouflage


Antenna--> s(6,6,6) i("models/3DWAREHOUSE/Antenna.dae")

Camouflage --> s(20, 200, 20)i("models/3DWAREHOUSE/CellTower.dae")

Monopole --> s(50, 100, 50)i("models/3DWAREHOUSE/Monopole.dae")

Lattice --> s(30, 200, 30)i("models/3DWAREHOUSE/Tower3.dae")


The rooftop type towers are located above the ground on top of buildings. Some building footprints were added to show this. CGA rules were also created to set the color and transparency of the buildings and range "bubbles" as well as extrude the building to their correct heights.

Areas with a lack of coverage were identified. Additional towers were added and their coverage were calculated. These additional coverage areas are displayed in the web scene as yellow bubbles. Finally IFRAME attributes were created for all towers, displaying a picture when a tower is identified.

Final web scene

View the web scene here (Note: It is about 48MB)