3DTiler: A tool to georeference 3D Models and generate 3D Tiles

Abstract. As 3D geoinformation and city models are increasingly used across domains like urban planning, education, indoor navigation, asset management, smart cities, augmented reality and digital twins, the demand for standardized 3D geospatial formats that are optimized for fast and efficient streaming, processing and rendering is growing. The here presented 3DTiler tool was developed in the context of the Virtual Campus project at the University of Cologne, where a georeferenced 3D model of the University of Cologne is developed and created, primarily to facilitate geometry matching based indoor positioning, and based on this allow for indoor navigation and geospatial augmented reality across the University Campus infrastructure and its buildings. 3DTiler was designed and developed to georeference 3D building models and generate according interoperable OGC 3D Tiles, to use the georeferenced 3D models in CesiumJS based web and game engine applications, as well as to provide our 3D data in a standardized and interoperable format for use in any client software, that supports the OGC 3D Tiles standard.