basemap issues

[Seth Teller <seth@graphics.lcs.mit.edu>]

greg, 

i asked laura cerritelli, one of the UROPs working
on the MIT model generator, to detail some of the
issues she's encountered using the basemap.  i've
included her writeup (with my comments marked >>)
below.  can you comment?

best,

seth.


Building errors/problems in the basemap:

*W85 (Westgate) has 4 buildings in addition to the tower (labeled ABC,
DE,
FG, and HIJ in a PDF from the website) and in the DXF File they have no
identification. the file. In the file of building names with the number
of
floors in each building (taken directly from an excel file that dof sent
andreas) the westgate buildings have the tower as W85 and the rest as
W85A, W85B etc. It would be useful if these names were used in the dxf
file as well. Similarly, bldg 14 is divided into 14N, 14E, 14S, and 14W,
each with different heights, numbers of floors, and locations, although
it
is technically the same building. Because they are drawn as the same
building, they are currently all just drawn as 1 building with the
heights and number of floors of a generic building 14.
Is there a standard  way to mark off subdivisions of buildings like
these?
>> GK:  can you group all the components of the building somehow
>> into the same building number?   that would allow us to fetch
>> the floorplans (for example, for building 14) and match them
>> to the union of all contours for that building, something 
>> which we can't currently do.

*looking at the building numbers stripped from the dxf file, it looks
like
the string with the building number in it is considered to be in the
lower left, so buildings like 6B and 4A, which have the labels centered
on
top of the buildings but the corners are outside of them. 12A has its
label outside of the building completely. We could try to find the name
based on the name closest to the center of the building, but this could
dangerous when there are several buildings close together.
>> we bind numbers to floorplan contours by looking for that
>> contour which contains the "origin" of the name string.
>> it appears autocad places that origin at the lower left
>> of the string.  in some cases this is outside the building
>> outline.  can you move the strings so that their lower left
>> lies inside the building?  or somehow indicate to us the
>> coordinates of the string center?

*There are skywalks in the dxf file connecting several bldgs (ie
E56-E60,
E51-E52, etc)In the floorplans of these buildings, there are sometimes
bridges, sometimes stubs of the bridges, and some only have doors to
outside of the building on upper floors. These would be useful, though
I'm
not sure if they're consistent (it looked like thw wall of E52 did not
match the wall off of the bridge from E51)
>> which layer do skywalks live in?  is it worth thinking
>> about making a named layer for these?

*there are these fraternity houses next to Burton-Conner (W51). They are
marked as MIT buildings in the dxf basemap and are attached to
burton-conner in the pdf map. They are not labeled (I guess being
fraternity houses, they are independent and thus unumbered) should they
be
included in the map of campus? they seem relevant.for the model, could
they be given a name and height (it would seem rude to ask the
fraternities for floorplans and to model them internally, but I doubt
they
would mind just having their houses placed appropriately, especially if
all they need to do is supply heights- and MIT may know that anyways)
>> what is DOF's policy on modeling frats on campus?  off campus?

*Macgregor has a tower and a shorter part, and after looking at it some
more, it looks like the tower is just unlabled. This may not be so hard
to
work around when we combine the floorplans with the exteriors, though.
The
only problem I see is that the floorplans seem to be separated by wing
as
if the wings were buildings (meaning there is a set called W61, and then
a
set called W61A, W61B, etc even though they're just different sets of 3
floors in the tower)
>> in the case of building 14, there are no floorplans posted
>> separately for 14A, 14B, etc.  but in the case of W61, there
>> are separate floorplans posted.  we should make everything
>> consistent so that a named outline exists on the basemap if
>> and only if a set of floorplans corresponding to that name 
>> exists as dxf.  is this possible?