As an urban planning student who has been involved in a number of planning studio’s 3D modelling often cames up as necessary evil. While when putting together presentations and proposals for assorted studio classes there is no rule that says you have to have a 3D model, the presentations that get all the ooohhs and ahhs are the presentations that have 3D models. Of course the problem with creating a 3D model for an urban planning studio presentation is that the majority of the programs that can be utilized to create these models are incredibly complex and hard to use. Often times the modelling program is too simple, or to complicated for the task at hand. Any student who has done an introductory class in urban design is made familiar with Google SketchUp, and is often forced to curse their way through modelling a city block, pushing and pulling a city block into existence from the most recent CAD file that the university has in its database. Later we graduate to ArcGIS and its shape files (which tend to get pushed back to SketchUp,) or for those who really want to marry their computers for a semester AutoCAD with a healthy sprinkling of Photoshop also tend to make an appearance.

The thing is that these programs are not exactly easy to use when it comes to modelling the urban environment, alternatively too simple or overly complicated its easy to get buried in shape files,  axis’  and vectors when all you want to do is draw a street. Enter CityEngine 2010.

CityEngine 2010 is an intuitive city modelling program that makes me want to weep a little when I think back on all the hours I spent labouring over shape files in ArcGIS. Often these labours just end up looking like little more then basic block forms with no detail once exported out of their respective programs.  Check out Turcot Quartier Eco Santé or Corridor Of Life – Ave du Parc LRT Proposal to see what I mean.

The demo for CityEngine 2010 shows how easy with it is with a couple of clicks to draw a city block and play with everything from the  street width, to the age and design details of the buildings that just pop into your city blocks as you click them into existence.

In their own words some of the features include:

While at the moment the 149$ student price tag is not yet in my budget… not because it isn’t a great deal when I consider the time to cost ratio (basically 10 hours of work,) and all the time I spent using other less user friendly programs, I had better pay for my tuition and books first. For now it goes on my wish list, either as a Christmas present or maybe someone in the marketing department at Procedural Inc. would send me a copy so I can write a full review!