On Screen Keyboard Open Sourced

January 25, 2019

3D Wayfinder uses a in-house built JavaScript Keyboard for search input. A On Screen Keyboard (Keyboard later on) is used when there is no physical keyboard. For security and ease of use reasons we can’t use the Operating Systems builtin Keyboard.

3D Wayfinder in-house built JavaScript Keyboard for search input on screen.
Norwegian keyboard

Previously we used our own User Interface library to manage the state of our applications. But times have moved on and we are now using other more popular and powerful open source libraries like AngularJS and VueJS. We managed to use the old Keyboard also with these libraries. But it wasn’t very handy and meant that we had to import libraries that were not necessary for whole project (eg jQuery).

So we decided to get free of 3rd party libraries and make it easy to install via npm (nodejs package manager).

Our On Screen Keyboard is usable with any UI library that supports importing ES6 module formats. You can define Your own keyboard layouts and actions with a JSON layout file. So we can have any language that we ever need and also make also fully custom keyboards that only a number pad or have special buttons for custom actions. Also the Keyboard itself allows to switch the layout.

Check out the GitHub page.

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3D Wayfinder Development Template is Now Available

January 11, 2017

A new template for development purposes has been published with simplified javascript API. Now it is even easier to get started with 3D Wayfinder and the integration of 3D maps into web applications.

We have published a special template for development purposes. It includes a 3D map with resize function, floor buttons, list of locations and groups etc. Also each part in template has a tooltip, where it is possible to see the javascript function which has been used for that specific section.

3D Wayfinder development template

In Addition with the template we are releasing a new SimpleWayfinderApi class that extends the existing Wayfinder class. You can find the SimpleWayfinderApi documentation here. To use the SimpleWayfinderApi in Your application embed with <script src=”//static.3dwayfinder.com/projects/shared/js/simpleWayfinderApi.js”></script >

It includes basic functions for getting floor, group and location data. Functions for getting specific objects (floor, group, location) to accept the object’s ID as a selector instead of using the object itself as a parameter.

The development template is a good way to start building your web-based 3D applications.
You can use this template by getting the embedded code from the template page. The template itself can be accessed via the administration panel at admin.3dwayfinder.com when selecting the view with template “DevTemplate”.

In addition to the new development template it is possible to test the new SimpleWayfinderAPI in a sandbox at CodePen.

Both the development template and simple wayfinder API will be updated with new features and functions regularly.

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Node Weights in Path Calculation

August 21, 2015

We have updated path finding functionality and path calculation. Now it is possible to change the weights of navigation nodes in 3D Wayfinder floor plan editor.

Path-finding application calculates automatically the shortest route from the starting node to the required location. In mobile applications, the Kiosk node can be your position inside the building. With 3D Wayfinder, the shortest route is calculated in a 3 dimensional room. It means the shortest path through all the floors.

Now it is possible to change the weights of the connection nodes. With this wayfinding application calculates optimal route, which doesn’t have to be the shortest. For example when you would like to guide your visitors to use the path inside the building instead of going around the building. Then you can set the weight for outdoor nodes higher. The weight is basically virtual length that will be added to the route, when passing the navigation node with a weight.

path_finding_functionality_in_3D_WayfinderTo use the weights you have to select the navigation node in 3D Wayfinder floor plan editor and change the node weight from the text box. By default all the weights are 0.

For example lets, say that waiting for the elevator takes usually 3 minutes. Lets assume, that visitors are moving with a speed of 3 km per hour, which is 50 meters per minute. So with waiting the elevator, visitor can pass 150 meters (3*50). If we would like to take account this in path calculation. Then we can add weight of 150 to the navigation node, that is marked as elevator.

Pathfinding functionality comes bundled in an add-on you can order from 3D Wayfinder Administration panel. It is also included in the Pro plan.

Read more about 3D Wayfinder’s path-finding capabilities.

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