engleski

COMPARISON OF DATA ENCODINGS TO DELIVER 3D TERRAIN MODELS AS TRIANGULATED IRREGULAR NETWORKS

Models describing the Earth surface or other surfaces related to it, such as underwater terrain, pedologic and geologic layers, are often given as triangulated irregular networks (TINs). Such models are used in numerous technological contexts such as GIS, CAD, BIM, 3D computer graphics, scientific visualization and others. The problem arises when the exchange of TIN data between applications is required, because there is no generally accepted standard. Different disciplines favour their formats and data encodings, so GIS applications primarily use GML formats, IFC is used in the BIM context, DXF in the CAD world, while VRML/X3D is mostly used in the 3D graphics community. This paper aims to investigate how formats are conceptually different, what semantic differences exist between the required formats, what information can be stored in which format and which format is most suitable for a particular task depending on the final purpose of application. It also deals with the issue of mutual format conversion and the loss of semantic information in that process.

3D file formats, format conversion, semantic differenece, triangulated irregular network

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