Spatial plan
What is a spatial plan
A spatial plan is a design which focuses on the landscape, environment, routing, public and private space, buildings forms and more. This design can be for an urban area in where it is called urban planning or for a more rural area. Spatial plans are created by urban designers or landscape architects and are in various scales.
Requirements on a spatial plan
The Tygron Engine can be used for importing spatial plans in the Engine to reevaluate certain design measures in a plan, for example if the parking standard is feasible. Before importing a spatial plan in the Engine, dependeing on the purpose of importing a spatial there are some things to be taken into account:
- If the purpose is to create a 3D model of a 2D- drawing. Remember that the level of detail in the Engine is quite large, thus if the plan is on a very small scale, the design might not be visible in the Engine.
- If the purpose is a visualization of the plan, sometimes it may be better to use placeholders for buildings, to emphasize that the design is in an early stage.
Most of the spatial plans on a smaller scale are being drawn in a AutoCAD (AutoCAD Map, Autocad 3D, AutoCAD Architecture). Therefore, below are some steps provided to import a plan as an AutoCAD file (.dwg) to a GeoJSON for importing in the Engine. In principle every spatial plan can be imported, as long as the original format can be converted to a GeoJSON.
How to insert a spatial plan to the Engine
- Save the AutoCAD file (.dwg) in AutoCAD as a .dxf
- Open the .dxf in a GIS, for example in QGIS
- Choose the right coordinate system when QGIS prompts the user
- Save the line layer as a GeoJSON.
- Import the file with the Data wizard
- The first step is to save the Autcad drawing instead as a .dwg as a .dxf file. This can be done in AutoCAD.
- The second step is to open the .dxf file in a GIS. In this example QGIS is used. The .dxf file can be opened by dragging the file in QGIS.
QGIS prompt to choose a Coordinate Reference System. Choose the coordinate system that is being used for the spatial plan. In the Netherlands, this is propably always RD 28992/Amersfoort New.
- QGIS asks which layers you want to open. Select all en click ok
There are 4 layers added to the Layer panel in QGIS:
- a point layer, which consists of the text elements
- a line layer which holds all the layers of the AutoCAD file
- a polygon layer, which contains the hatches of the AutoCAD file
- a geometrycollection layer
The layer you probably need is the line layer. This layer can be saved as a GeoJSON