Support for Absolute Elevation.

[Suleyman-Arslan]

As stated in the ArcGIS Indoor Viewer documentation it requires Relative Elevation for 3D.

Supporting Absolute Elevation in 3D scene will bring more flexibility and extra capabilities. In this way, we can use ground elevation surface and underground floors more realistically.

[Tim_McGinnes]

As far as I know it already does support absolute elevations. In the ArcGIS Indoors Information Model it has both  ELEVATION_ABSOLUTE and ELEVATION_RELATIVE fields.

Your actual geometry should also be possible to store in either absolute (z above sea level) or relative (z above ground). When you setup your 3D scene just choose the appropriate setting "At an absolute height" or "Relative to the ground".

Have you got a link to where it states relative elevations are required?

[Suleyman-Arslan]

Your absolutely right. Data model contains both of them.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/indoors/viewer/prepare-a-scene-for-indoor-viewer.htm

Everywhere in documentation they mention to use relative elevation

I thought as you thing and prepared my data with absolute elevation. At the and everything was fine except navigation in 3D view. Indoor viewer displays navigation path over the air as picture below.

I contacted Esri support for this. They told me to use relative height as stated in the documentation.

[JunruChen]

Hi @Suleyman-Arslan,

Thank you for the comment. 

The indoors features ELEVATION_RELATIVE values are actually the features geometry Z-values. The reason to use this value is that publishing multipatch layers is supported for features that are only at absolute elevation height from the geometry Z-values. If using ELEVATION_ABSOLUTE value instead to work with the Ground elevation surface, the Elevation properties of the layer need to be set to "Relative to the ground", which cannot work with the Scene Viewer (please refer to the this page)

In the scene screenshot you have included in the above comment, I suppose the features that appeared to be 'floating' in the air are caused by using ELEVATION_ABSOLUTE values with the "At an absolute height" elevation setting in ArcGIS Pro.

Thank you.

Regards,

Junru

[Suleyman-Arslan]

Hi @JunruChen,

Thank you for your answer,

In my case, All of my data geometry Z-values are Absolute Elevation and I created scene layers with Geometry Z-values. Even the Network dataset also created with absolute elevation as geometry z-values. I did not use Relative Elevation anywhere. Relative elevation is available as information only in attribute level.

When I test network analysis in ArcGIS Pro Everything well, the direction path display correctly over the floors. But when I publish scene and use in Indoors Viewer, Navigation result is as displayed on screenshot.

Am I missing somethings?

Regards,

Suleyman.

[Will_Isley]

@Suleyman-Arslan If you open a support case and share your data, we can take a look at the underlying cause.

[Suleyman-Arslan]

Hello @Will_Isley, Please check out Esri Case #02842013.

[AnninaHirschiWyss]

With the latest update, both fields ELEVATION_RELATIVE and ELEVATION_ABSOLUTE are no longer present in the ArcGIS Information Model.

When importing a BIM file into Indoors, the absolute elevation is converted to relative in the z-values and all information about the absolute height is lost, you would have to create a special field in the units for it, map it with the revit-property and join it to all the other layers...

Is there a way to display and make work a 3D Scene with absolute height? Or is this not as indoors is designed? It would really be useful to have terrain information, especially for buildings on hills, where half of  floors might be underground and half off ground.

The other option would be to create a special scene for visualisation purposes only (building scene layers directly from the revit) but without any indoors functionality (wayfinding, analysis, POI search...)

I cannot find the case #02842013, so could you give us a status update here, @Will_Isley / @JunruChen ?

Thanks

Annina

[Suleyman-Arslan]

Hi @AnninaHirschiWyss ,

I am waiting this enhancements since First version of ArcGIS Indoors.

The enhancement request status is still "Under Consideration". Hopefully someone from Esri Indoors team may give us some information about production plan.

[AnninaHirschiWyss]

A couple of months have passed, and I have another use case for the use of absolute elevation:

In a hilly terrain, outdoor paths above might the enter the buildings e.g. on level 2, whereas paths below enter it on level 0, or even in the basement.

Would you give the "outdoor"-pathways-vertices simply the relative elevations of the levels and "interpolate" the vertices in between?

It would be much simpler to use absolute elevation and grab the z-values from the DTM...

I know from other projects where they use absolute elevation, so it is possible, but the import tools should support it natively to avoid post-processing steps...