DUDEK - Effective 3D Simulations

Management Support

3D Simulations Help Projects Win Approval
It’s hard to imagine how new construction will alter an existing view. So, to help city council members, planning commissions, and local neighbors better visualize projects up for approval, designers at Dudek draw them a picture. Or, more accurately, they paint them a photo of the future.

“Very few people can look at a two-dimensional drawing and say, ‘Oh, that’s what this is going to look like,’” said Paul Caligiuri, senior visual designer at Dudek. “So we create it for them – we put together photorealistic before-and-after three-dimensional simulations. It helps people really understand how a project will affect their community.”

Helping a Golf Course Get Approved in Carlsbad

The Carlsbad Municipal Golf Course in Carlsbad, Calif. is one such project. Plans for the proposed 200-acre golf course include a clubhouse, bridges, graded terrain, and panoramic ocean views, but after 18 years, the course had yet to be endorsed by the city council.

To help the council with their decision, Caligiuri combined existing two-dimensional golf course architects’ drawings, grading plans from the civil engineer, water feature designs, and landscape designs into a three-dimensional representation of the proposed facilities. Using sophisticated simulation software, he modeled the buildings and created a terrain model for the grading, superimposing the resulting three-dimensional simulation onto a digital photo of the site. With digital topographic maps and GPS, he camera-matched his simulation to the real world, and then added textures, lighting, landscape, people, and even golf carts. In total, Caligiuri created seven different simulations - new bridges, wetlands, the clubhouse, and views of the golf course from future industrial buildings around the perimeter.

With simulations in hand, the city council recently approved the golf course.

“We were very, very pleased with the results,” said John Cahill, Carlsbad’s municipal projects manager. “We used them extensively in our public presentations and they were very helpful to convince the public and the council regarding the project. The old phrase, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words,’ is particularly true when it comes to visual simulations - they tend to provide a very graphic, very detailed representation of what is otherwise pretty mundane engineering and architecture.”

Choosing How Many Homes to Build at Trump National

The Trump National Golf Club – Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., is another project in which three-dimensional simulations helped push the approval process. One section of the course was originally slated to include 36 homes, but the golf club wanted a driving range instead. So, Caligiuri created two simulations – one depicting the previously-approved residential development with the planned 36 homes and another showing the proposed driving range with only 12 homes.

“Obtaining a plan amendment for a project like this is very difficult,” said Scott Yarnall, project manager of development for Trump National. “What the simulations did was show the council that by deleting these homes, it was going to greatly increase the ocean views of the neighbors.”

An independent consultant for the city signed off on the simulations, confirming their accurate depiction of views and angles, and the city council recently approved the plan amendment. Yarnall is already working with Dudek on another simulation project – building 200 villas on a different part of the property.

“Because the driving range was accepted by the council, they will be more apt to accept the villas as well,” said Yarnall. “It almost becomes a standard - Dudek put together a great package the first time, so they are comfortable with what Dudek will put together this time around.”

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