D7.6 – Data Transformation for 3D BIM Rendering v2
Creators: name: Vassiliadis, Michalis
name: Tsalis, Christos
name: Malavazos, Christos
name: Giannakis, Giorgos
name: Papafragkakis, Apostolos
name: Kakarantzas, Pavlos
name: Fotopoulou, Anastasia
name: Charbi, Theofania
name: Karalis, Evangelos
name: Katsigarakis, Kyriakos
name: Lilis, Georgios
name: Bernardos, Socorro
name: Gonzalez-Gerpe, Salvador
name: García-Castro, Raúl
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022

description: Within COGITO, several Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are being deployed to interact with the construction project stakeholders. Composed of various supporting services of different TRLs and maturity levels, COGITO components that are being developed and delivered in WP4, WP5 and WP6 are supported by dedicated front-end solutions for the end-user enabling them to (i) navigate the as-planned and as-built input and output data as well as (ii) trigger actions whenever required. Despite the fact that the COGITO consortium comprises partners who bring existing GUIs that are adapted, configured and re-purposed for the needs of the project, only a subset of COGITO’s GUIs is being developed from scratch to support the DigiTAR, Digital Command Centre (DCC) and VirtualSafety applications. 

For that subset, targeting to a common look and feel end-user experience, within COGITO, the Digital Twin Platform, backbone of the COGITO ecosystem, is enhanced with the COGITO Unity Library, a collection of C# scripts that is delivered in the form of a Unity package. The COGITO Unity Library constitutes the main outcome of task “T7.3 – Data Transformation for 3D BIM Rendering”.

The first version of the library was delivered in M18 and documented in the interim version of this document, titled “D7.5 – Data Transformation for 3D BIM Rendering v1”. Accommodating all the refinements that were identified and implemented from M19 to M24 of the project to support the advances in the Digital Twin Planform, the subject of the present deliverable is to document the second release of the COGITO Unity Library. The necessary updates were realised through various integration with the Digital Twin Platform tests that have been performed during the aforementioned timeframe. 

In summary, the library provides functionalities for establishing the connection with, discovering projects and querying their as-planned and as-built data from the Digital Twin Platform, performing the 3D Building Information Model to mesh-based data transformation, and consequently converting the 3D geometric representation of the BIM model into manageable formats for Unity integration. At this point it is worth mentioning that although the COGITO Unity Library was initially planned to support the 3D BIM rendering in Unity environments only, the contributing partners opted to deliver a full package that provides all the necessary functionalities for interfacing with the DTP, querying the as-planned, IoT location tracking, as well as the Digital Twin applications (quality control, work progress and health & safety) results and visualising them in any Unity application. As a proof of concept, the COGITO Unity Library has driven the development of the Digital Command Centre, a Unity webGL application, documented in “D7.8 – Construction Digital Twin 3D Visualisation module v2”.