With his move to Vienna in 1544, he rendered his services to the city, court, and citizenry. The city employed him in 1547 to develop designs for bastions, to create etched views of Vienna, and to produce a plan for the city following the Siege of Vienna. These views were the first ever rendered according to scale, and the circular city plan was the first ever produced by triangulation, a system of surveying that Hirschvogel developed. Vienna's council sent him to explain his work to Ferdinand I in Prague and to Charles V in Augsburg; Ferdinand granted him a pension of 100 "gulden" for it.