Traditionally, building a 3D urban environment is very time-consuming resulted from numerous buildings and details of a city. Designers used CAD software to create shapes one by one, and researchers analyzed cities by computing 2D information in GIS (GIS only supports limited 3D shape generation like extrusion.) CityEngine's Procedural Modeling system makes it possible to generate complex 3D models via information massively, bringing a large number of relevant applications. It not only enhances the workflow of urban design/study/planning and merges to a new field of study called Geodesign (means using geospatial information to design a city), but also lowers the threshold of making city environments in game and movie industry.
