This guide provides a step-by-step process for creating and modifying a minimap for your 3D model using the Xeokit SDK. The minimap enhances the user's navigation experience by providing an overhead view of different floors (storeys) and enabling first-person navigation within the 3D model.

In xeokit v2.4, we have added the ability to dynamically reposition a model within xeokit's double-precision coordinate system. This means that once a model is loaded, it can be moved to any location within the full extents of xeokit’s double-precision coordinate system. This feature allows us to load a BIM model from an XKT file and a point cloud from an LAZ file, and then reposition either model to align them with each other.

A model can be dynamically translated and rotated, but cannot be scaled. Disallowing scaling of models is necessary for this mechanism to work efficiently within xeokit’s double-precision coordinate system.

In this guide, we'll introduce how to localize xeokit, so that we can dynamically it between different languages. Specifically, we'll show how to localize xeokit's core Viewer component and plugins, and how to localize xeokit's bundled BIM viewer application.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to load an IFC model into a xeokit Viewer, and position it within the Viewer's double-precision 3D Cartesian World coordinate system using mercator-projected geodesic coordinates (longitude, latitude and height).

A xeokit viewer can exchange BCF viewpoints with other BIM software, allowing us to use the viewer to report and view issues in BIM models. In this tutorial, we'll demonstrate this capability by creating a BCF viewpoint with a xeokit viewer, which we'll then import it into a second xeokit viewer.

In this guide, we'll use convert2xkt to convert an IFC file to xeokit's native, fast-loading XKT format. Then, using JavaScript, we'll view the XKT model in the browser using xeokit Viewer component. As the Viewer loads our model, it will create 3D scene objects, along with a parallel metadata structure. We'll show how to use that metadata to navigate the scene objects and get information about them.

See also: Textures in Scene Representations

• Introduction
• Work to do
• Creating an XKT File Containing Textures
• Loading an XKT File Containing Textures

Introduction

In this tutorial, we'll use xeokit's convert2xkt CLI tool to convert a binary glTF model with textures into xeokit's native XKT geometry format, which we'll then view in the browser using a xeokit Viewer.

• Introduction
• Tip 1: Disable Geometry Reuse
• Tip 2: Use FastNavPlugin

Introduction

The xeokit Viewer is designed for performance, but some of its special rendering effects can run slowly with huge models. Furthermore, if our models contain excessive geometry reuse (described below), then they can hit a pathological case for the Viewer and slow it down considerably.

Fortunately, xeokit has some options we can use to keep our Viewers smooth and responsive for these cases, which we'll describe in this article.

• Introduction
• 1. Install convert2xkt
• 2. Convert CityJSON to XKT
• 3. View the XKT in the Browser

Introduction

In this mini-tutorial, we'll use xeokit's convert2xkt CLI tool to convert a CityJSON model into xeokit's native XKT geometry format, which we'll then view in the browser using a xeokit Viewer.

CityJSON is a JSON-based encoding for a subset of the OGC CityGML data model (version 2.0.0), and is now published as an OGC community standard.

The XKT format compresses models into a compact payload from which xeokit can load large numbers of objects over the Web in seconds, at full geometric precision.

For our CityJSON file, we'll use a LoD-3 model of a railway line, which is one of the sample datasets provided at here. When that's converted and loaded, it will look like the example below.

See also: Converting Models to XKT with convert2xkt

The xeokit SDK enables the loading of large, full-precision BIM models over the web in seconds, which can then be viewed in a browser. To achieve this, we convert our IFC files into xeokit's native XKT format. This format compresses model geometry and metadata into a compact payload that can be quickly loaded by a xeokit viewer while using minimal browser resources.

This tutorial demonstrates how to use the ifc2gltfcxconverter tool from Creoox AG and the open source convert2xkt tool from xeolabs to convert an IFC model into an XKT file, which can then be loaded into a xeokit viewer. This combination is currently the most efficient option for converting IFC files to XKT.

Additionally, this tutorial shows how these tools can automatically split each model into multiple XKT files, allowing huge models to be converted and loaded in chunks that don't overwhelm server and browser resources.