This page is a reference for how to use Giraffe. If you are starting with Giraffe watch this 10 minute video.
We are urban designers, and we built Giraffe to make urban design as easy and fun as possible. Giraffe has hidden depths - this page will help you find them.
We are mainly available on the app to chat - just click on the red chat icon in the bottom right of the screen.
Search the address you want, draw a boundary, give the project a name and you are golden. (Don't worry you can change the boundary later. :) )
Once the layers are in a project, turn them on and off in the layers menu. Some of them are 3D! Most are 2D. If you have data mapping you think people need to see, call us! We'll add it to the list.
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Our people are designers, and designers work with pens. If you upload a plan sketch to Giraffe you can geolocate it, and access it easily ever after!
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Some buildings have podiums. If you drag two buildings over each other in Giraffe one will become the podium and one will become the tower. Giraffe will take a guess on which is which, but you can use stackOrder to set it. The higher stackOrder goes on top. When I set the stackOrder to two the purple Warehouse section goes on top.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/204e3dc7-d43c-491a-904a-8f4734d368ac/2020-02-12_19h22_42.mp4
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Everyone we meet is a frustrated architect. Let's make some buildings. Buildings are polygons in plan. Create a polygon, then select the type of building you want it to be. Giraffe will make a building in plan, 3D and add it to the areas table.
If you want to see it in 3D click on the 'top view' toggle in the bottom left (or hit 't').
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First you draw a line, then you tell Giraffe you want it to be a road. You can customize the road and pavement width. Drawing roads is pretty painful - hopefully this makes it easier.
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Time for some greenery. Landscape is an area - so from Giraffe's perspective it is a polygon. Draw a polygon and make it 'Landscape'. Behold your creation! Landscape is measured as open space in the urban metrics.
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Pretty drawings are nothing without numbers. Click on the data tab to see the total areas of your development. The areas shown are net areas (GFA), and are a fraction of the total area of the mass. (You can set the efficiency in the data tab - look at the Configure section.) Double click on the data tab if you want to pop it out to get everything just right.
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Each project has a chat window. Chat in real time with anyone who you've shared the project with. Use the chat to record notes, minutes and actions.
Questions for the Giraffe Team. Ask us anytime using the support chat - look for the red circle on the bottom right. We're Urban Designers, Architects and Engineers and we want to help!
Giraffe searches high and low for public layers. When we find them we dust them off and add them to a list. Adding them to a project is easy.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/9f423ed6-7bcf-4a3d-83fa-cee7529fbd40/2020-02-25_16h16_09.mp4
Add from Mapbox:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/53dcbf7d-ab18-4480-8604-926aafff9e53/mapbox-layer-import.mov
Add from an Esri Map Service
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/18837fdb-81bd-4962-a9c4-8ec9078a5ec1/mapserver.mov
We can connect other data sources too - please contact us to learn more. https://www.giraffe.build/contact