3.9.2 release – Making money by calculating volumes in Infrakit 

They say, “Money is in the masses”. Someone outside of our infrastructure construction community would first obviously think of mass marketing or mass production, but for us, that means something entirely different.  

Making money with those masses is easy in theory, you just need to know = You just need to control your mass balance effectively. What is hard is doing that in reality. 😀  

That is why our team of champions, the Infrakit developers, wanted to rise up to the challenge -> To make a tool for volume calculation utilizing DEMs, Digital Elevation Models. 

Get flashy with the DEMs 

Sit on a coffee table with your supervisor. Your armpits sweat a little, you know it is that discussion again… money discussion. Your supervisor looks to the right, out of the window into the site and the question. “What about that pile over there… what do we have there…”.  

Your face turns into a quirky smile. You know this is your time to shine. “Hey boss, why don’t you check that one from Infrakit yourself, you can always check from latest flight, even at your iPhone!”.  

The boss taps you into your shoulders, “Wow, that was amazing, I must make you the CIO of our company with your superior digitalization skills!”. 

Okay, maybe the online DEM Volume Calculation tool won’t make you the CIO of your company overnight… But it definitely makes you stand out when combined with all of the benefits of the Infrakit platform!  

PS. Big Kudos to Wolff & Müller for helping us with this test data! 

Researching the greatest secrets of brewing data 

You people on the site have been rocking lately! The amount and quality of the coffee beans you have been pushing to Infrakit has been superb! Where do you even get those?? 

“What in the world is that blog writer again writing there in Infrakit…” you must be thinking. Coffee beans? Okay let me explain – by coffee beans I mean the data you feed into our systems. Now what we want to do as the coffee machine to that data is to: make all the best coffee types for you! Espresso, macchiato, marocchino, americano… from one machine.  

We invested again a lot of time and passion in researching how to brew the best way possible to put a smile on your face. And now for the 3.9.2 version, we found out a lot of new methods!  

To name a few, we found a way to improve the performance of preparing americano (DWG/DXF) a lot, enhanced the appearance of espresso (IFC) by a mile, and elaborated the level of details of macchiato mixture (3D collaboration model) greatly! 

Using software must feel right 

The promise of our software uniting all stakeholders around the same data brings also the responsibility of making using our software accessible for all. “It just feels right”  is what we want you to say when using Infrakit.  

How to make it happen? Paying attention to detail and being passionate about discussing with you on how to simplify things.  

For this version we focused a lot on bringing these wishes of simplification into life, here is a couple of the greatest ones:  

– We built you a way to use custom icons for external documents, to make things more visually simple 

– We designed many pieces of Infrakit to be more responsive on different screen sizes, especially to help you to use Infrakit Files page on mobile devices 

– We polished our mobile applications to have more intuitiveness in how to operate with the data.  

– And we also now enable you to select photos to preview by area on the map page 

Yet another successful version of Infrakit was released with yet another odd blog post about it… 😊  

Check more details on what is new in the 3.9.2 version from our release notes! 

Chef’s Special Menu: Infrakit OFFICE 3.9.1

Men hvordan ser menyen ut, og hvilke verktøy skal man bruke for å lage den? La oss ta en titt!

Forrett:

Måleverktøyet kommer med snap-to-model og snap-to-rett-vinkel. Det er også mulig å opprette et lastebilområde direkte fra måleverktøyet. Easy. 

Ny høyreklikk i 3D-visualisering der det blir enkelt å vise veilinjene, gjengi flere vektordatafiler i 3D (undersøkelsesformater som GT), fargelegge og se egenskaper.

Legg til egen logo på PDF-rapport eksporter fra Infrakit.

Bruker du deviation-vectors i LandXML så visualiseres disse nå i kartet.

Hovedrett: Raskere enn McDonald’s, bedre enn favorittrestauranten din

Tid er penger. Kvalitet fremfor kvantitet. Anlegget ditt fortjener både effektivitet og å bygge riktig første gang.

Nå trenger ikke kvalitet og hastighet alltid gå på akkord når noen intelligente løsninger kommer på plass. Med denne versjonen har vi lagt ekstra vekt på å optimalisere ulike flaskehalser ved megaprosjekter. Dette inkluderer mye raskere tverrsnitt, filoppføringer på tvers av systemet og raskere tilgang til prosjektinnstillinger.

Dessert:

En god restaurantopplevelse toppes alltid med en deilig dessert. Hva kan være en bedre dessert for deg å servere til prosjektet, enn å la alle få vite at alt er trygt og forsvarlig, lagret som et arkivprosjekt.

Som med alt annet, se hvordan du forbereder denne fine ørkenen for prosjektet ditt ved å arkivere prosjektadministratorsiden din. Tilgang til prosjektet fjernes enkelt fra alle brukere og utstyr. Alle er glade, alle er trygge.

Du er Michelin-kokken i vår bransje, så husk å være stolt av det!

Takk!

Se mer i utgivelsesnotater

Mastering Infrastructure Tenders: Proven Strategies and Smarter Tools for Success

Winning construction tenders for infrastructure projects requires a strategic combination of expertise and effective communication. Tailoring your approach to each project is essential, but three key considerations consistently enhance your chances of success:

Thorough Understanding of Project Requirements:

• Showcase a clear understanding of client/owner objectives, project scope, and relevant technical or regulatory considerations.
• Get to know the existing conditions and then tailor your bid to address specific tender requirements, emphasizing how your expertise aligns with project needs.

Innovative and Sustainable Solutions:

• Differentiate your bid by proposing innovative and sustainable solutions that exceed basic requirements.
• Highlight environmentally friendly practices, energy-efficient technologies, or cost-saving innovations aligned with client goals and industry trends.

Effective Communication and Relationship Building:

• Establish strong communication channels with clients through pre-tender discussions and have simple ways of sharing information.
• Know the competitive landscape and their relative strengths/weaknesses, and the projects they’re working on.
• Understand and nurture relationships with key stakeholders, subcontractors, and local supplier partners, showcasing a collaborative and reliable approach to project delivery.

Our amazing customers have streamlined their bidding process using our solutions by leveraging our cloud platform as a shared hub for the tender team, facilitating faster collaboration and communication (both internally and with external stakeholders).

With the ability to have PDF documents, DXF/DWG and other design sources, orthophotos, and other base maps, you can work from a common source of truth all on a shared map.

Tools, like Infrakit FIELD (mobile app), and Infrakit OFFICE combine to offer simple workflows to capture and tag photos for undocumented risks during site trips and help tender teams, who generally lack easy access to BIM tools, to visualize 3D elements in the office or the field.

Users can also capture dronemaps for work phase planning, taking advantage of different seasons for comprehensive ground condition assessments.

Book time with our experts to discover how these solutions can be leveraged for improved efficiency and success in winning your next construction tender!

Black week offering of Infrakit in terms of version 3.8.7!   

Black Friday, nowadays seemingly more like a black week or two, is without a doubt the most notorious sales day of the year. There are pros and cons to it, but all in all, if you make smart purchase decisions during it, it will be very good time to buy Infrakit as a Christmas gift for your loved ones… Oh… no… I, I meant buying something nice can be smart… Though Infrakit is very nice, maybe I would not give it as a Christmas gift for children. 😀

Ookay jokes aside, our products are maybe not be the ones that are the hottest of the hot during Black Friday, but we still wanted to give you something a bit extra this time, in terms of developing more awesome stuff into our products! Let’s go check them out!

Capture your map beautifully!

How wonderful would it be if you could think of something, and Infrakit would do it as you wish?

Undoubtedly awesome, and even if that is not yet the case today, we took one step towards it by enabling you to select an aspect ratio and area with OFFICE  for your Map image capture tool! We added also some options to modify the legend contents!

Let me teach how to do this via this video!

Powerful metadata in the palm of your hands

Knowledge is power they say. Clichés are clichés not because they are dumb but because they are too true too often.

We want to make you powerful by having all your knowledge of the project in the palm of your hands (especially, if you keep your laptop mouse in your palm). For this, we brought the plan features metadata visible to you, when you click the LandXML!

Watch the video to make this power yours!

Simple but fast… we upgraded your use of files and images into next level

Images and files… So simple things, but yet they can be such a burden so often when they become too many.

If we say knowledge is power, then we say speed is… well, speed. What is interesting in the case of using software like Infrakit, is that speed is not only made by how fast something works, but also how much there are roadblocks to take away your speed. Those roadblocks can be tiny but when you have plenty of them, they become a burden.

We took extra care as a Black Friday gift for you to remove as many small roadblocks of utilizing and viewing images and uploading files in Infrakit. For example image direction is visualized on map helping users to understand the insights from field in deeper depths!

As always it is impossible to tell you everything we did within one blog or you would have to read it as novel… so these are the highlights, but if you have interest on diving deeper to what new we have out there, check them from the Release notes in our Knowledgebase!

We have heard you. You have clearly not been satisfied with our Infrakit FIELD app, especially on Android devices. You as users and we as developers as well, want it to be a nice and smooth app, which helps you to do your work. (Note: These changes informed in this blog are only considering Android devices, if you are using iOS, you can skip reading this and continue your day!)

To make that smoothness and niceness possible, a while ago we made a decision to reconstruct the FIELD app completely, according to your needs. That process required us to acknowledge, that there is a strong differentiation within the user needs of the app. Some of you needed it for surveying purposes with integrations to GNSS equipment to take points, but some of you needed it rather for taking photos and managing project information.

We saw these different worlds in one app being an impossible combo to keep it simple and intuitive for all. It’s like having Food delivery and Social media platforms in one… Just too complex. Thus, we decided to take action, renew ourselves, and separate the app into two. From now on, there will be two apps, Infrakit FIELD, and Infrakit SURVEY. Now, I bet you are wondering “What are they then about, which one should I have?”. Do not worry, you have the right questions, and this blog can provide you with the right answers!

Drag-and-drop orthos are here with Infrakit 3.8.6!   

I bet hearing these stellar news will make even chief journalists of Times, Wired, and other of the world’s largest Magazines envy my position as a notorious Infrakit blog writer since I am the one that gets to first tell them… 😉 

Okay, are you ready to hear it… Infrakit eats now orthos itself!  

Now that it’s said and done, let’s take a bit deeper look into what this means for your work! 

Stoop stop stop! I want to steal your attention still for a second before getting into the text -> Our Thesis worker Jetro has worked super hard for this feature to become captured reality (you see the pun intended 😉), thus, I would love to see you giving him a minute or two of your opinions regarding this feature. Link for a Master’s Thesis questionnaire at the bottom of the text, Let us help Jeti!!

Getting orthos into Infrakit has never been easier… 

Would be cool to demonstrate my newly learned skills among orthophotos by explaining to you technical buzz-words to make you break a sweat «Oh this guy knows what he is doing». But honestly, the feature is so simple that a chimpanzee could use it, so I guess my days of acting cool are over… I mean basically, just by dropping the files into Infrakit you can get access to your orthos in Infrakit Map, Now think about that! 

Let me rephrase this from your point of view. Your work life will get a ton easier by having the relevant and up-to-date information in the form of orthophotos readily chewed up on Infrakit because this feature lets the drone gurus do that so quickly! 

Currently, supported file formats are .tif, .tiff, and .jp2, and all the necessary knowledge and information on using this feature can be found in our KnowledgeBase. 

Check the easiness of this from this video!

… and they can be opened in third-party as well! 

Until Matrix comes alive there is not a single system that can perform everything needed everywhere in one place. Not even Infrakit can solve everything on its own and we quite humbly recognize that. Thus, as always, we want to be as flexible as possible with other awesome software out there, making your life easier when jumping from one software to another! 

For this, we pursue making the opening of uploaded orthophotos in third-party systems superbly smooth! Go check how this is done with Civil 3D from the video below, and other cases from our Knowledge Base!

And a special announcement for integrators and customers having their own pipelines for orthomosaic processing! Please contact us for guidance on super simple APIs that make sharing your content with Infrakit users a true delight.

Super Sharp DWGs!  

You tell us and we hear you! DWGs are essential data to be visualized for you on the Infrakit platform and that is precisely why we have been going the extra mile to make them super sharp and functional for you.

Now we dare to say the version 3.8.6. starts to have them in a fashion that is ultra crisp and clear, take a look at yourself!

For all Autodesk users out there! Now you can also download as-built as a DXF file, data nicely organized to layers by codes.

Pssst… If you are a hardcore Infrakit user, here is a little easter egg for you -> go check what is new on the Infrakit Admin page… or rather, what has made its return 😉 

AND HERE IS THE LINK TO JETRO’S QUESTIONNAIRE! JA TÄSSÄ LINKKI SUOMEKSI!

Check the more in-depth list of new features and improvements of this version from our Knowledge Base