FME Provides Access to Full 3D Cityscapes

27 October 2009, 1:47pm

Vancouver, BC, October 27, 2009 – Safe Software today announced that FME®, the leading spatial ETL (extract, transform and load) solution, now provides ESRI® users with access to full 3D cityscapes directly within their ESRI ArcGIS® environment. ESRI users can now develop more realistic visualizations in a fraction of the time, helping them deliver more valuable business insights to decision makers.

Safe Software has achieved this by adding support in FME for 3D data textures and additional 3D formats including Autodesk® 3ds, Autodesk Civil 3D®, Google™ Sketchup™ and Collada. Safe has also enhanced FME to be capable of creating Geodatabases with attributes and textures on 3D objects, and has designed FME to extend the browsing capabilities of ArcCatalog®, enabling users to view textured 3D objects without having to import data.

ESRI users can now leverage 3D data from a wide variety of sources – whether the data has been custom-designed in 3D authoring environments, purchased from data providers or collected free from 3D warehouses – and then import or view the 3D data directly in ArcGIS for use in enriched visualizations and analysis.

"We can now meet the pressure to share our 3D city with everyone," says Eddie Larsson, GIS Manager at the City of Gävle, Sweden. "By using FME, we can now keep our full cityscape in our ESRI environment and share it out in the formats people ask for, such as KML. Safe Software has helped us put a very realistic Gävle on the map - our famous Yule Goat and all."

Designed in partnership with ESRI, who has announced their plan to add 3D editing and routing tools to the ArcGIS 9.4 release, this development culminates two years of collaboration to deliver improved 3D interoperability to ESRI users.

"We are very excited to see the vision we had over two years ago coming through to reality," says Dale Lutz, Vice President of Development at Safe Software. "This newest development is a giant step forward in enabling the GIS market to work with the 3D data they want to access to enhance their business intelligence."

Organizations interested in seeing how FME enables quick direct-view and importing capabilities for 3D data in ESRI ArcGIS can access the FME 2010 beta at the links below.

About Safe Software and FME

Safe Software powers the flow of spatial data with its software platform, FME. The recognized standard in spatial ETL (extract, transform and load), FME is the only complete solution for data conversion. It delivers the most extensive format support for data translation and integration, and provides unlimited flexibility in data model transformation and distribution.

FME is used by thousands of customers worldwide in a variety of industries including government, utilities, and petroleum. Its powerful data access technology also makes FME the choice of leading GIS, CAD, and database vendors for integration into their own solutions. Designed for true data interoperability, FME unleashes spatial data so people can use it where, when, and how they want to.

FME 2010 beta

City of Gävle 3D City information

Safe Software

Geo: International