Welcome to Plex-Earth 2023!
We're excited to share what we call the 5 design dimensions!
For more than 10 years we've been helping some of the most notable engineering firms worldwide design in a way that's swifter, smarter, and more cost-effective.
That's because Plex-Earth gives you a complete geographical view of your working site, in just a few easy minutes, and from the convenience of your own office.
We partner with premium image and data providers worldwide, ensuring your needs are covered with the best imagery and terrain choices available.
So, let's meet those five dimensions of Plex-Earth:
1. Georeferencing
2. Importing Imagery
3. Importing Terrain
4. Timeviews (monitor an area or project over time)
5. Google Earth Visualization
1. Georeferencing
Relating a drawing to a Coordinate System is the first thing you should do before applying any command in Plex-Earth. This way, all the imported or exported data will be placed in the correct coordinates.
Apart from choosing among literally thousands of Coordinate Systems, you can also relate a point in Google Earth to a point in AutoCAD (or BricsCAD) for automatic georeference, retrieve your recently used georeference choices, and finally, define custom displacements!
This feature takes place at the "Georeference" button, found on the "Project" panel. This brings up a dialog box, displaying two options:
⦁ Quick Georeference
⦁ Specify a Coordinate System
These tutorials explain both options.
| NOTE: If you are using AutoCAD 2015 or newer and have already set up geolocation with AutoCAD, Plex-Earth reads and uses this directly, so you can skip this step. |
2. Importing Imagery
This is where your new software imports satellite and aerial imagery into your AutoCAD drawings, vastly easier than trying to line things up manually.
If you have ever tried manually you'll know the real world isn't flat and the images won't line up, but Plex-Earth will align everything for you, accurately and automatically.
Plex-Earth acts as a host to the best premium imagery providers, namely Airbus, Maxar, Nearmap, and Hexagon. Note that each provider comes with different usage rights, in order to print, distribute and create derivative work from your images, such as proposals or stakeholder documentation.
Of course, your favorites, Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMap, and the ability to create custom maps via our Map Explorer, are also here!
How-To - There are two ways to import imagery with Plex-Earth:
⦁ Quick View (Very quickly, dynamically cover your area with a single image)
⦁ Create a Mosaic (Cover your area with multiple images with the quality of your choice)
All the images are placed and properly aligned in a matter of seconds or minutes, no matter the size of the area. To do that, click on the "Import Imagery" button, found on the "Imagery" panel.
To really master this feature, there's a more in-depth tutorial: Just click here.
3. Importing Terrain
Do you want to acquire terrain data for your project site without having to go there? Well, with Plex-Earth will do that for you easily.
You can spot every bump, dip, channel, ridge, or generally any obstruction that exists on the site and the surrounding area!
Visualize terrain morphology, create contour lines, import thousands of elevation points, perform advanced terrain analysis (directions, elevations, slopes, slope-arrows), and get this valuable information in your hands from the beginning of your design.
But the magic does not stop here!
Want to combine both 2D imagery with 3D terrain? Plex-Earth can do that too...
The process remains the same, just click on the "Import Terrain" button, found on the "Terrain" panel. Do this after importing some imagery to create your 3D imagery.
Finally, don't forget to read these tutorials, as there is a lot more to discover!
4. Timeviews (Monitor the Progress of a Project)
This innovative feature of Plex-Earth allows you to create a chronological visualization of your area of interest, with a variety of historical imagery datasets from our premium providers, Airbus and Maxar; therefore quality, recency, and vast historical intervals are guaranteed.
The Timeviews feature enables professionals to track all the changes made in the construction field, or even to observe the progress of a project through time, and such instant feedback and interaction help make Plex-Earth a mandatory design tool.
This useful – sometimes critical – feature can be found on the "Timeviews™" panel, and accessed by clicking "Create Timeline".
Again there is a more in-depth tutorial available for this feature.
5. Google Earth Visualization
Want to convince and impress your clients?
Then Plex-Earth is the perfect visualization tool for you!
It allows you to export whole 2D or 3D drawings or models into Google Earth. This way everyone can see how your models interact with the real world, helping them to better understand your designs or proposals!
Plex-Earth supports all AutoCAD and BricsCAD objects and preserves their look and feel inside Google Earth, such as linework, text, hatch, blocks, external references, and so on.
This exporting function doesn’t require direct communication with Google Earth, as Plex-Earth exports the required files for you, and these can then be simply and easily opened by anyone with Google Earth.
Yes, you can also import Google's KML files into AutoCAD or BricsCAD, using Plex-Earth! So paths, polygons, anything you can create in Google Earth can be literally copied and pasted into your drawing, perfectly aligned for you.
Quick tip: You can synchronize Plex-Earth with Google Earth by simply generating a single placemark in Google Earth, and then just copy and paste that placemark via Plex-Earth. This will instantly align everything.
You can get fully accustomed to all things Google/KML, both importing and exporting, by seeing these 5 tutorials.
Thrilled and ready to find out more? Try our Advanced Tutorials!
Don't have Plex-Earth yet? Explore all the features and potential benefits of this software; install a fully functional 7-day free trial of Plex-Earth now!