Managing 3D assets and data

The VU.CITY desktop app stores 3D assets and data locally on your computer. Depending on the size of your chosen city/cities, these assets can take up a significant quota of your local storage, and also require time to download. If therefore you have multiple installations of the VU.CITY desktop app, you may wish to create a single directory that all VU.CITY desktop installations use, rather than maintaining separate asset directories.

Sharing assets between multiple users

If you wish to share assets between multiple users, it is recommended you modify the global config file before you launch VU.CITY for the first time, as this will ensure the directory is created in your desired location without you needing to manually move it from its default location (which is C:\VUCITY). The global config file is located in C:\Program Files\VUCITY\AppVersionNumber\VUCITY_Data\StreamingAssets\globalConfig.json

To generate a batch file that can automatically update globalConfig.json with your chosen shared directory, please copy and paste the network address of your shared directory into the following converter. The converter produces a simple text file without any code signing, so it may be flagged as potentially malicious by your security software (it is short and human-readable, so you can check through it yourself for peace of mind). Note you will need to change the extension of the batch file from .txt to .bat in order to run it:

If you would prefer not to use a batch file and instead update globalConfig.json manually, it can be edited using any text editor. Once you open the file, locate the field titled AssetsRootPath and change the address to your chosen shared location, as well as the UserLicencePath (which should sit directly inside your main asset directory). Remember to adhere to the JSON syntax i.e. escape from any backslashes. For example, replace \ with \\, and \\ with \\\\.

Setting who downloads asset updates

If you are sharing VU.CITY assets over a network between multiple users, it is recommended you devise a plan/schedule around who can download the assets, and when those asset downloads are carried out. You can theoretically set all users to be able to download asset updates (this is on by default), however in practice it's better to assign this task to your admin user/s, and to run asset updates at a weekly scheduled time when other users are unlikely to be using VU.CITY.

To assign a user the ability to download asset updates, tick the can download updates box when creating their account:

Updating the shared network asset directory

To update a shared network asset directory, you will need to sign into the VU.CITY app using an account that has the can download updates option checked as described above. Upon signing in, click on the city licence. This will automatically check for available updates, then give you the option to download them. Note VU.CITY Cloud is always up-to-date.

Updates to VU.CITY's model and data assets are usually published weekly. To ensure your users have the most up-to-date assets, we recommend running updates on Mondays.

Validating / repairing your assets

If you encounter issues with your city model or data assets, VU.CITY has a built-in asset validation tool that can identify and repair issues. To validate the assets, hold down the control key as you click on the city licence. The process may take several minutes.

If validating your assets fails to address the issue, you may need to delete and redownload your assets.

To redownload your city model, delete the folder with your city name in the C:\VUCITY\assetbundles\ directory, and download all updates when you next launch VU.CITY Desktop.

To redownload your data sets (i.e. GIS data layers, consented timeline models etc) delete the folder with your city name in the C:\VUCITY\datasets\ directory, and download all updates when you next launch VU.CITY Desktop.

Important notice regarding updates

Each new version of the VU.CITY desktop app contains a new globalConfig file. If therefore you are using a shared network asset directory, you will need to repeat the abovementioned modifications to the latest version of the globalConfig file, then duplicate that modified version into the local Files\VUCITY\AppVersionNumber\VUCITY_Data directory of each computer that is running VU.CITY.