Plan.City London how-to series 12: Measurement Tools

Today we'll take a look at the different measurement tools available inside Plan City London. These tools allow us to quickly evaluate areas, distances, and radii all directly within the 3D city model. We'll start with the area measurement tool. To access it, open the tools panel and select area measurement. The first thing we need to do is click on sketch a new area. From here, we can begin drawing a polygon directly on top of the city model by clicking with the left mouse button. As we place points, you'll notice two helper systems appearing, a compass and a snapping grid. These make it easier to create straight and angled segments. Once enough points have been placed, we can close the shape in two different ways. We can either click near the starting point or we can press the enter key. If we make a mistake, we can always press the backspace to remove the last point or press the escape key to cancel the operation entirely. Once the polygon is complete, the app automatically calculates the surface area and the planimetric area. These results are displayed inside the management panel where we can review or create additional measurements. One important limitation worth mentioning is that the area tool only supports non-intersecting polygons. If lines cross each other, the app will warn us and prevent that calculation. Next, let's move on to the radial distance tool. This functionality allows us to create circular distance measurements around a specific location. To begin, we need to click on the new measurement button. And the first click after that will start defining the central point of our new measurement. The second click defines the radius. And once created, the radius can also be adjusted numerically through the text fields in the panel. One particularly useful feature here is snapping. Pressing the T key in your keyboard enables snapping to existing radial centers, allowing multiple measurements to share the same origin. This is extremely useful when creating urban catchment studies. For example, 400 m walking radii, 800 m accessibility zones, or transport influence areas. The app currently supports up to five concentric measurements per group with a maximum radius of 4 km. Finally, we'll take a look at the straight distance tool. This tool allows us to measure the distance between multiple points. To begin, click on the new measurement button and start placing points across the scene. As we continue adding segments, the panel updates with several values. The total XYZ distance, the X and Y planar distance, and the height difference between segments. This makes the tool useful not only for horizontal urban measurements, but also for analyzing terrain elevation and vertical relationships. Backspace removes the previous point, and the app currently supports up to 20 measurement points per path. Together, these tools provide a very flexible set of measurement systems for urban analysis and planning workflows. And that's how the measurement tools work inside Plan City London. We'll see you on the next one, but thanks for watching as always and see you in the next video.