seth, you're very welcome. we're looking forward to seeing the system in action as well. i completely understand and agree with your long-term goal of building/updating the model without human intervention. towards that end, i would say that yes sometime in not too distant future we could certainly provide you with direct access to our database in order to retrieve the necessary data. however, we're looking at a major database upgrade in the near future, which won't change the data in the database, but will very likely change the method of accessing/retreiving it. so, it makes more sense to work with the individual data pieces for now until those system changes are in place. furthermore, there may be some changes to the floorplan format themselves due to the ongoing space management system project we talked about in my visit to ne43. for instance, we may actually move/rotate our floorplans so they coincide with the real-world coordinates of the campus baseplan to facilitate querying across buildings - which is a capability we presently don't have. again, for now i'm attaching spreadsheets with the building heights from grade and the insertion/rotation parameters. again, i'd ask that maryla help your students access topo surveys and retrieve missing building heights as necessary. a word of caution as far as the topographical surveys go. most of these surveys were done to provide an accurate base for construction projects. hence, they're pre-construction. as-such, any of the site elevations are likely incorrect at this point as re-grading occured during construction. however some of the data, such as building foundations and floor elevations should be fine. greg -----Original Message----- From: Seth Teller [mailto:seth@graphics.lcs.mit.edu] Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 2:40 PM To: Greg Knight Cc: Maryla Walters; Building Model Generation Group Subject: thanks, plus more info greg, thanks for your help to andreas. these guys are *really* starting to get some traction -- we will soon have the capability to generate a rudimentary model of the whole campus (base map + floorplans + heights), totally automatically from the 2D data. andreas forwarded me some of your mail, and it seems that there is lots of data which is available at your end, or extractable at your end into spreadsheets. you asked if you should send them along: > 1a. At this time, there isn't a script or report on > the space accounting web page that returns distinct > floors for each or every building. I ran a custom > query/report against the db to retrieve this > information. I'm attaching a spreadsheet... i'm writing to say emphatically *yes*, in all cases, with the following clarification and emphasis. as we've discussed, our long-term goal is to make the entire 3D model compile automatically, solely from information found at your site (and of course a set of rules that we apply to interpret the 2D data). this way, the dataset will be truly "live" -- if you update your web site, our 3D model will get updated. sending us individual data pieces is very useful in the short term, as it gets my guys the data they need. but in the longer term -- and i acknowledge this requires some design/thought at both ends -- we are aiming for a way to make those queries happen entirely automatically, from our server to yours, with no human in the loop. so, for example if we could get remote access to the query engine you used, we can invoke it from here, and interpret the results (say, floor heights), without the manual step (and without having to bug you). is this technically possible? (i imagine yes, but i don't know what's in place at your end.) can we have a discussion about what else you maintain there, but is not (currently) visible or accessible through the web interface you provide? can i send my guys over to get a guided tour of what data you have in-house that might be of great use at this end? examples: building angles, topomaps, etc. we want to put/get all of this on-line so we can integrate it. best, seth. Andreas F Wehowsky wrote: > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 13:22:35 -0500 > From: Greg Knight <GKnight@PLANT.MIT.EDU> > To: 'Andreas F Wehowsky' <andreasw@mit.edu> > Cc: Maryla Walters <MWalters@PLANT.MIT.EDU> > Subject: RE: building information > > Andreas, > > Here are the answers to your questions. > > 1a. At this time, there isn't a script or report on the space accounting web > page that returns distinct floors for each or every building. I ran a > custom query/report against the db to retrieve this information. I'm > attaching a spreadsheet with that information here. > > 1b. Building height from grade is available on the space accounting website. > (http://insite.mit.edu/cgi-bin/cgi-bin-db-mit/wdbmitindexscript?ibdb+MIT). > This may not be convenient for your work however. If it would be easier for > me to send you a single spreadsheet with this information let me know - its > readily done. You'll also note that some buildings don't have heights. In > those cases, you'll have to refer to our archives of record construction > documents. Maryla Walters (our archivist - cc'd here for info) can help you > with this. We should take advantage of this data collection effort and make > note of these missing heights and record them in the database for use in the > future. > > 1c./2. Building floor elevations (height above sea level) are not recorded > in our database. Some of this information is captured in topographical > surveys that we have of campus. Not all areas of campus have been surveyed, > so again, the information here is not complete. > > 3. In the course of developing composite floorplans of campus we have > captured building insertion and rotation parameters. At this point, the > information isn't in the database, but stored a spreadsheet. I can make > this available to you as well if you'd like. > > Hope this helps. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. > > Greg > > ------------------------------------ > Greg Knight > Manager, Drawing Information Systems > MIT, Department of Facilities > 77 Massachusetts Avenue, NE20-277 > Cambridge, MA 02139 > 617.253.7094 > http://web.mit.edu/facilities/www/it/dis/ > mailto:gknight@plant.mit.edu > ------------------------------------ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Andreas F Wehowsky [mailto:andreasw@MIT.EDU] > Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 5:07 PM > To: gknight@MIT.EDU > Subject: building information > > Hello Greg, > I'm Andreas Wehowsky, a computer science student, working for Seth Teller > at the computer graphics lab. > We are working on how to generate a 3d model of the MIT Campus. > > I have some questions, > > how do we for each building the easiest and safest (reliable) way find > 1. number of floors, height and height/floor for the building > 2. the elevation (z coordinate - e.g. above sea level) > 3. the right orientation for the building: we have the base map of MIT and > we can obtain floorplans for each building, but how do we find out how to > rotate the floorplans, so it matches the right base map orientation? E.g. > one could link information between floorplans and the base map and > describe what corner is the most south-east. > > I hope you can help us or tell where to find more information. > Thanks, > Andreas > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Name: Insite_Bldg_Floor.xls > Insite_Bldg_Floor.xls Type: Microsoft Excel Worksheet (application/vnd.ms-excel) > Encoding: BASE64
insite_floorplan_parameters.xls