The Interoperability of InfraWorks 360 The world of Civil By Heidi Boutwell By becoming more interoperable with other design programs, InfraWorks 360 is becoming more powerful than ever. Interoperability continues to be one of the hottest topics of conversation at nearly every Autodesk event I visit. Such was the case at the Autodesk InfraWorks 360 Customer Council event in San Francisco, CA. There is no doubt that, as InfraWorks 360 continues to evolve, its capabilities will become more integral parts of the infrastructure design process. This means that InfraWorks 360 must be interoperable with existing Autodesk tools. Often, new users want to know exactly how InfraWorks 360 is interoperable with other Autodesk programs. InfraWorks 360 team is working hard to make their product completely interoperable with all the other Autodesk programs out there. So what can you do with an InfraWorks 360 model? Using the .fbx fi le format, you can export In fact, InfraWorks 360 can read and display many structures such as buildings and different fi le types. Some of these come from bridges to other Autodesk programs, Autodesk programs, and some do not. InfraWorks such as AutoCAD, Navisworks, Civil 3D and 360 is fully in sync and interoperable with Civil 3DsMax. You can open an SQLite fi le with 3D. But InfraWorks 360 can also play nicely with both Civil 3D and Map 3D and maintain a live Autodesk Structural Design, Revit, 3DsMax, link between the programs. You can also export Inventor, Map 3D, Autodesk Utility Design, and IMX fi les that can be opened and used in other other programs. The difference is that, even specialized programs, like Autodesk Utility Design. though InfraWorks 360 can display and send InfraWorks 360 will also directly send out an .fbx information to other Autodesk Programs, it’s not a fi le with the structural design data of bridges to live, dynamic link. It’s a static link. Autodesk Structural Design for designing the rebar The downside to this type of static link means that in the bridges. if you change the item in InfraWorks 360, then Now, I’d love to say InfraWorks 360 is fully you’ll need to export a new fi le to the originating interoperable with everything out there, but that programs again. In those other programs, you’ll just is not the case quite yet. As InfraWorks 360 then need to import that updated InfraWorks 360 and other Infrastructure programs become ever fi le to implement the latest changes. This isn’t more interoperable, look for future articles and exactly what we may want, but at least it’s partially lessons about their interoperability features. interoperable and can only get better. I know the www.cadlearning.com 13 1313