CityGML has officially become an OGC Standard. This is great news for those of us who are tying to work with and exchange 3D models of buildings and cities. I’m still a CityGML newbie, but the more I look at the standard and learn about it, the more I’m excited about what we’ll be able to do in the future with BIM and GIS. Moving data back and forth between BIM and GIS is almost impossible today, but hopefully this is a huge step forward. You can view the standard at this link (after accepting that wacky OGC license).
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James Fee - jfee@weogeo.com
James works for WeoGeo helping people organize, share and monetize their geo-content.
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Does ESRI support the creation, editing, and/or viewing of CityGML data?
Support for ESRI’s own Multipatch format is limited and they just started supporting viewing Collada files. I wonder how long it will take before we can start using CityGML?
No they do not. I haven’t asked them if/when they plan to support it.
http://www.esri.com/software/standards/support-iso-ogc.html
Safe FME of course supports CityGML:
http://www.safe.com/products/desktop/formats.php
Does google earth support CityGML?
This was the first I had heard of it, let alone the standard.
Seems like everybody and their uncle are rushing to OGC to get their proprietary format turned into a “standard”. I guess for the right price anyone can have one.
What part of CityGML is proprietary? It is an open standard.
@MTBMaven: The Data Interop extension at 9.3 included CityGML reading (and it reads full 3D objects — one thing that might not have been noticed was that data interop at 9.3 became fully 3D capable with a few 3D formats, including IFC and LandXML reading, and Adobe PDF 3D writing — this is unrelated to the 2D maps in PDF). Now, to be clear, the CityGML version supported was 0.4, which has been in use for quite a while now, not the 1.0 released just now. Furthermore, as we announced today here http://www.safe.com/aboutus/news/2008/119/index.htm, FME 2009 beta supports writing CityGML 0.4, and overall we are working to support both 1.0 and 0.4 as soon as we can. (One great thing about standards is how they evolve into incompatible versions and how support for all the various versions is typically necessary.) And as the support for CityGML becomes part of FME, it will become part of the Data Interop extension at the next logical service pack or release. If any Data Interop customers want to try it out in the meantime, we’ll find a way to get it in their hands as well.
Dale
@Dale Lutz, Thanks for the response. That was quite helpful. Now by this “If any Data Interop customers want to try it out in the meantime, we’ll find a way to get it in their hands as well.” Do you mean FME or ESRI?
It’s good news. CityGML is a decent standard. Autodesk, ESRI and Oracle will all be up to speed on it in the next few months. Autodesk is probably the biggest backer to CityGML having bought 3D Geo this month and AD’s long history of CAD.
Hopefully in a few years time we’ll be able to regard 2D gis as a special form of 3D and not the other way around.
@MTBMaven — the traditional way is to contact ESRI support and they will route your request over to us, but we are working to make that process more direct in the months upcoming. If you’d be willing to give our betas a try, they are always available at http://www.safe.com/beta, and then you can request a license from us in the license form that will come up after you install, and indicate that it is to test CityGML with ArcGIS, and we’ll look after you.
Dale
Just a quick response to Dale’s comment on standards changing. Yes, OCG standards do change as implementation experience is gained and new features are requested. This can create difficulties for developers/implementers – and is one reason product implementations of OGC standards (or any IT standard for that matter) always lag the latest version (revision) of a standard. This is especially true for major revisions (see below).
That said, any OGC document numbered less than 1.0, such as 0.4, is not an official OGC standard and if implemented, the developer must be beware that the document will change. Second, the following numbering scheme is used when numbering an OGC standards document:
1.0.0 – First official version. Document number – x.y.z – “Z” is a corrigendum, also known as a bug fix. If the “Z” digit changes, then the schemas will have changed and we strongly encourage all implementers to move to the new revision. “Y” is used to represent a minor revision. Minor revisions are supposed to be backwards compatible. “X” is a major revision number. If this number changes, backwards compatability most likely is broken.
Now, the OGC is working on a new document that defined how to write better OGC standards. This document will be fairly unique for a standards organization. Part of this document describes how to design and write standards based on a “core-extension” model. This model was heavily discussed by the OGC membership and the general agreement is that such a model will allow for the writing of a quite stable “core” and then add extensions as necessary.
The design of CityGML version 1.0 actually reflects this thinking and this is why 0.4 and 1.0 are so different.
Carl