Though an interview last month with Cesium, I learned that there is an open competitor to Google Earth that works with CAD.
Cesium Geoimaging
Even though Cesium -- the company -- has been around only for nine months, the underlying technology has been worked on for eight years. It began as an R&D [research and development] project inside an aerospace company that wanted to track satellites accurately.
They released their software, CesiumJS, as an open source project for displaying massive amounts of 3D geospatial data in Web browsers. Cesium says it has the ability to achieve sub-millimeter-level accuracy in tracking things like satellites.
The company is located in Philadelphia with 23 people, and recently received Series A venture funding. It's named after the element cesium that's used in atomic clocks for the accuracy.
Cesium ion processes and hosts massive 3D data sets, while CesiumJS visualizes the scenes using the 3D Tiles format. You can see samples at sandcastle.cesium.com/. See figure 1. While most of the demos place buildings and vehicles on topographical maps, it can work with indoor scenes too. A slider lets you move through time to see changes that may have been recorded. And you can host your own data on Cesium Ion.
Figure 1: Point-cloud scanned church with a variety of geospatial imagery
(all images sourced from Cesium)
Ralph Grabowski: What is the difference between free and paid accounts?
Cesium: You pay for commercial use, otherwise Cesium JS is open source and always free to use .
Grabowski: Who do you consider as competitors?
Cesium: We don't have exact competitors that are at the intersection of computer graphics and geospatial.
Grabowski: What else do you plan to do with Cesium?
Cesium: For construction specifically, we plan to simulate the job site to show what it is going to look like, show the resources that are needed, the routes for machinery,and so on.
Grabowski: Do you support CAD formats?
Cesium: We are working on importing, DXF, DWG, [files from] Topcon and Trimble, and LandXML. We plan to not just import the design data, but also edit the design data.
Grabowski: Whose CAD editor will you use?
Cesium: We will write our own CAD editor. We want to add a way to make adjustments to the content being displayed by the Web browser, such as making the target design better optimized for the existing terrain.
3D Tiles Format
3D Tiles is a package file format developed by Cesium that is also supported by other graphics applications, such as Unity. The name "tiles" comes from how it does streaming: when you are far away from a scene, just a few parent tiles like skyscrapers are seen; as you move closer, sub-tiles (linked to the top-most ones) display daughter skyscrapers around the original ones. See figure 2.
Figure 2: Tile-linked skyscrapers in New York City
The b3dm format is documented at github.com/CesiumGS/3d-tiles. It supports four kinds of data:
- B3DM - batched 3D models rendered by meshes, videos, animations, billboards, and so on
- I3DM - instanced 3D models for repeating similar 3D mesh objects, such as skyscrapers and trees
- PNTS - point clouds, just like the ones we all know
- CMPT - composite stacks tiles together to reduce queries and speed things up
The display of tiles is controlled by JSON [JavaScript object notation] and tiles are delivered through glTF [graphics language transmission format]. Johann Sorel provides the clearest explanation (and description of limitations) that I was able to find at geomatys.com/en/2018/07/18/3d-tiles-in-action-for-enc/
The CAD-like entities supported today are points, polylines, and polygons. Extensions allow 3D Tiles to handle more properties and functions.
Construction with Komatsu
Komatsu is the second largest manufacturer of construction equipment in the world, and the largest in Japan. Cesium struck a deal with Komatsu to fuse data coming from construction sites, which the heavy duty manufacturer says is part of their Smart Construction solutions.
Cesium's role is to provide a dashboard to Komatsu's customers to monitor construction sites from anywhere in the world, seeing it change over time, and to compare design plans with real-world data being used to calculate cut-and-fills, slopes, and so on. See figure 3.
Figure 3: Dashboard developed by Cesium for Komatsu
Sources of data include GPS trackers and sensors on earth moving equipment, overhead drones taking pictures, and from CAD models. The incoming data are combined into 3D meshes of the job site on top of CAD data of the site, and then displayed in their Web app.
Grabowski: Where is the data stored?
Cesium: Data is initially stored on edge servers on the site, and then hosted on Cesium's cloud platform for sharing.
Grabowski: How is data transmitted from the collectors to the servers?
Cesium: The steaming is done over 3G connections [the data transmission used by cell phones]. WiFi is not needed and might not even be available on the work site.
Grabowski: How is your enhancement to Komatsu equipment paid for?
Cesium: Komatsu customers buy an add-on package that includes the software, drones, servers, and so on.
Grabowski: Is Komatsu your first big customer?
Cesium: They are the first one in construction. We already have government customers, like Track Santa from NORAD.
http://www.cesium.com
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Someone on Reddit suggested you might be interested in this story. I'm an Autodesk customer concerned about climate change, so I contacted the CEO about their support of coal mining in the largest coal mine of Europe, near where I live. It emits 270,000 tons of CO2 every single day.
 Autodesk brochure about RWE from 2009
I still can't believe how Autodesk responded:
I went to their office, hoping to politely arrange a meeting, someone called the police. I am just asking Autodesk to respect their own policies. I thought it was a fairly reasonable request, but I'm amazed with their response. This is not what I was expecting from a leading company in software and tech.
Coal mining photos posted outside an Autodesk office
You can read the full story at paper.dropbox.com/doc/Autodesk-coal-mining-correspondences.
- Joanie Lemercier
France
The editor replies: I think that it is normal for corporations to say one thing and do another, just as people do. I am not singling out Autodesk here. In my opinion, all corporate social responsibility efforts are marketing exercises to keep environmentalists off their backs. If companies were actually worried about their impact on the environment, they would shut down their operations entirely.
On the other hand, the need for RWE to dig up lignite coal (the dirtiest kind) in Germany is the responsibility of the German chancellor, who unilaterally ordered the shutdown of clean nuclear power plants. So, it's politics all around, instead of science. (Coal use in Germany is to be phased out by 2030.)
Mr Lemercier responds: I agree with you, and I'm slowly discovering the PR versus reality. I'm quite amazed to see such dissonance between the words and the actions. I doubt Autodesk employees, investors and CAD users are aware of this, what do you think? Would you have any advice to shed more light on this story?
The editor replies: The dissonance occurs because CAD software is meant to design things that can consume resources and so produce waste.
It really doesn't matter if employees, investors, and users are aware. When it comes to a Maslow's-Hierarchy-of-Needs situation like this one, having a job to feed and house yourself and your family trumps quitting a firm that writes software that helps maintain a coal digger on another continent.
And it's not just CAD. Western manufacturers deliberately build products in China to increase profits and export pollution. They design meant-for-obsolescence products that do not allow users to replace parts that wear out, even for something as necessary as replacing a phone's battery.
Re: Coronavirus
Concerning GIS & COVID-19, there is an example of nice use and public sharing of stats on this ArcGIS web service from our Ministry of Health: hexperience.arcgis.com/experience/e4e58e39a0ec410eb054f42012a27b4b
- Robin Capper
New Zealand
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