Tag: indoor positioning

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.

We have added compass widget for Developers Template. Compass arrow can be shown on top of the map canvas to point to the north (or any other direction) of the 3D floor plan.

Compass is one of the tools and widgets that is needed for one of our larger building information (BIM) project. There are also other tools under development that provide building information and help work with different data related with building 3D model.

Compass widget is using 0-point of the Y-axis. It is called with Camera view-port service orbitController.  It has property currentRotation, which holds the model’s rotation data.  Needle of compass is animated using that data.
Compass example is integrated into Development template. Template can be accessed via the administration panel at admin.3dwayfinder.com when selecting the view with template “DevTemplate”.

When using compass, it is important to notice, that the 3D floorplan has to be modelled north pointing to Z axis. Otherwise you need to make adjustments in widget’s javascript code, which calculates the compass’ position.

We have improved our 3D rendering engine. Thanks to better memory management we got 10..20% performance increase in FPS with larger 3D models.

We updated our WebGL javascript engine – FRAK – in 3D Wayfinder. Many memory management functions have been improved in the new version. With the new FRAK engine 3D Wayfinder provides better loading speed performance for larger 3D models, that use more memory. With smaller 3D models, the increase in speed is not noticeable.

Testing with one really large shopping mall floor plan we got increase in performance in average 15%. In idle mode we recorded 16 frames per second (FPS) increase, jumping from 44 FPS to 50 FPS. While actively showing path we recorded a 7 FPS increase, jumping from 38 FPS to 45 FPS. In normal use, 3D Wayfinder is limited to 30 frames per second.

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.

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.

3D Wayfinder provides offline snapshot add-on to create static wayfinding application that can be used without internet connection. Read more about offline indoor wayfinding. 

When kiosks or digital signage screens don’t have internet connection, then there are 2 options:
1) to use offline snapshot or
2) to install the 3D Wayfinder Enterprise Server locally.

Offline indoor wayfinding snapshot Add-on enables to save 3D Wayfinder projects for offline use. The add-on creates static files of all the assets and modifies the template file for local use. Also to use the snapshot files You need a local web server. Because modern browsers do not allow requests to local files. Read more from the offline snapshot tutorial.

Kiosk or totem set-up is the same as with using 3D Wayfinder from the web.

The only thing with offline snapshots is that after each update the files in kiosk need to be updated.

We are also offering 3D Wayfinder Enterprise Server with Administration panel and everything else, that is needed to administrate wayfinding kiosks locally. For more information, please contact our sales team.

Here are couple of 3D Wayfinder template examples. Wayfinding template for touch screen kiosks and mobile for indoor positioning in shopping malls, hospitals, airport etc. Contact our sales team for demo.

We have joined the Open Design Alliance to develop CAD file support to 3D Wayfinder. With CAD support it will be easy to upload building drawing files and show them directly through web.

3D Technologies R&D (developer of 3D Wayfinder) is now a member of Open Design Alliance. The Open Design Alliance (ODA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of open industry-standard formats for CAD. ODA was established in 1998 and now has over 1300 members.

Most of the architectural modelling is done with Autodesk CAD software packages, where DWG files are native file formats. DWG is a proprietary and closed file format and it doesn’t have open specifications. ODA has deigned Teigha library which supports the use of C++, .NET, and ActiveX interfaces. Also it allows the exchange of data through .dwg, .dgn and .stl files.

We will search the possibilities to provide also DWG file reading in 3D Wayfinder. This will open up a whole new area for 3D Wayfinder. Architects can directly upload their building drawing to 3D Wayfinder and also real estate managers, building owners etc. For example DWG files that can be viewed through 3D Wayfinder. There will be no need for converting DWG-s to common 3D formats that 3D Wayfinder currently supports.

Some of our customers prefer a “Welcome” screen for their wayfinding application. Welcome screens are good way for inviting visitors to use wayfinding, it is also a page where you can show advertisements or welcome text. To minimize the load for kiosks we change the frame-rate of our WebGL rendering engine FRAK. 

Welcome page is configur as an idle-page, when no one is using wayfinding. Usually it is set to 10+ seconds after idle time, when the welcome screen is displayed. On this view, we are hiding wayfinder map component and directory. When visitor starts to use wayfinding, then welcome screen close and floor plans with directory are activate. Certainly, the welcome screen is also helpful for customers to understand what the screen is about. Also a great way to advertise for businesses located in the mall.

To save the kiosk pc and graphics card (GPU) we set the 3D rendering (see FRAK WebGL engine) also idle. This is important for limiting the frame-rate to a minimum. Frame rate change can be invoke with Engine.startIdle(fps) and return to normal operation with Engine.stopIdle(). See 3D Wayfinder API for specific documentation.

We have also fixed a bug in SmoothOrbitController that made animations oscillate on very low frame rates.

What is the difference between 3D vs 2D wayfinding and what are the benefits of 3D floor plans?

We have tested 3D, semi-3D and 2D floor-plans with our small focus-group and below is the short summary.

To see the 3D floor-plans in action, please sign up to 3D Wayfinder for creating your own 3D floor-plans, or see our 3D modelling services and examples.

3D Wayfinder supports also 2D images for creating wayfinding application.

Semi-3D maps are rendered or designed floor plans, that are made to look like 3D. The map is rendered on an angle, so it is possible to see part of walls also.

We are using semi-3D maps for mobile devices, where WebGL is not supported yet.

3D vs 2D wayfinding floor plans

We have released a new version of FRAK WebGL engine with support for JSON 3D model format. This decreases the browser-side loading time as browsers’ native JSON parser is faster, than parsing binary models in Javascript, as we used to do so far. Of course we will continue to support binary models also.

FRAK JSON model specifications can be found from FRAK Github repository.

Initial testing shows, that compressed JSON files are the same size as binary files, but browser side parsing is many times faster.

Here are testing results for parsing with different 3D geometry:

RGB box (12 poly)
With binary format: 250 ms
With JSON: 10-60 ms

Axis Test (3440 poly)
Binary: 300 ms
JSON: 36-60 ms

Wayfinding demo ground level (20069 poly)
Binary: 1265 ms
JSON: 50-70 ms

Browser side parsing time varies a bit, but even with larger models it should be less than 100 ms.

Support for JSON models will be available in 3D Wayfinder in near future. This will probably make the 3D Wayfinder application (with models) loading time smaller about 50%. Of course it will depend on the project size, textures, internet connection etc.