Month: June 2017

3D Wayfinder is now being used for Building Information Model (BIM) applications. By creating BIM kiosk software for Estonian National Museum we have added many new and useful features to our software and improved the performance for larger models.

Estonian State Real Estate Ltd ordered Building Information Model solution from us for recently opened Estonian National Museum. Now the visitors can easily explore the 3D model of the whole construction. Also they get the overview of the building by all the details.

What is BIM applications?

BIM model is a digital equivalent of the building. It can contain everything from doors to electric fixtures. Although BIM applications technology and methodology is more common in the design of the building. It has large potential benefits for buildings management and maintenance phase.

Estonian National Museum’s new building is meant both for exhibitions and scientific work with net area of 33 879 square meters. We received a model of a building made with Revit, Autodesk software for BIM. It contained highly detailed information – e.g. all the pipes – so it needed a lots of simplifying.

After the adaptations we still had a huge file with close to 12 000 separate elements. It is the largest model we have had in 3D Wayfinder. It was also the reason why we changed the logic of initializing POI data to make the loading of large objects faster.

Table view for all objects in BIM model was done by using Spreadcell. Spreadcell has easy upload from MS Excel files and it provides table-view, sorting etc by webservices (in JSON format). All the objects are divided into separate groups so the final user can choose what do they want to see, hide or find.

Kiosk design

We also built and designed the kiosk from scratch. Since most of the modern kiosk hardware is only enough for showing advertisements or 2D wayfinding plans. The kiosk is equipped with a landscape LCD screen, a touch panel and a dedicated graphics card. It makes kiosk suitable for applications that require greater graphical computing capabilities.

3D Wayfinder application helps to make BIM useful for those who have no access to specific softwares themselves. For example we can integrate BIM with different management softwares. Also add the ability to write comments. In this way we make it easier for different parties to collaborate on centrally shared model.

Lõunakeskus, one of the largest shopping centers in Estonia, has undergone a large scale upgrade.  It is now larger, freshly modernized and it uses large wayfinding kiosks with clean user interface and integrated location data.

Lõunakeskus is the largest shopping center in southern Estonia and one of the largest shopping centers in Estonia. After the upgrade the size of the main building is now 72 000 square-meters. There is now a cinema, a hotel and around 30 new shops and diners.

There are 5 large 55-inch custom kiosks for the wayfinding application. Kiosks are landscape and set up with an angle that is easy for the client to use. Previously Lõunakeskus  also used printed directories near the information kiosks, but now the wayfinding kiosks are the only source of directory.

The wayfinding applications user interface is designed in a really “clean” way. There is 2D map with the directory menu. It is also possible to choose between 4 languages, zoom and move the map, change floors, see the You-are-here spot etc. Larger tenants also have logos on the map, which makes it easier for the customer to navigate and find the desired location.

Data for the wayfinding directory comes from the shopping centers own CMS, that is being used for their website. The data is provided to 3D Wayfinder application in XML-format and it contains all locations and location groups. All the location groups are generated dynamically upon loading the application and locations are added to the location groups along with their descriptions, names and links to images. On the map there are predefined overlay areas, each of which are linked to a POI in our system, a POI that has only the “room_id” attribute set and the “room_id” is unique for each POI. In this case we are using the “room_id” attribute for highlighting locations on the map.