Geocortex Web helps you build beautiful web mapping applications, and we wanted to take the next four weeks to really show off how powerful this new technology is!
In the first of our Geocortex Web-themed tech tip videos, we’ll show you how to configure applications that allow your end users to transition seamlessly between 2D maps and 3D scenes.
This tech tip will be helpful to any developer that wants to learn how to make their apps suit the needs of any user, without sacrificing stunning visuals or performance.
Video Transcription
“Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Fingler. I work on our Technical Marketing team, and in this tech tip video I’m going to show you how to toggle between 2D and 3D applications inside of Geocortex Web. Let’s take a look
In this tech tip video, I’m going to highlight how you can create Geocortex Web applications that allow your end users to move seamlessly between 2D and 3D applications.
Here, I am currently at apps.geocortex.com, and selecting Web will log me into the Geocortex Web designer. In this scenario, I’m using my ArcGIS Online credentials, but you could also be using Portal for ArcGIS credentials to log into this SaaS-based designer. You also have the option to install this and host it on your own servers on premises as well.
Here, I’m in Geocortex Web and I got the choice of several different templates. I’m just going to select this Web GIS – Default template. What it’s going to do is load a default web map, as well as a default web scene that can be toggled from a 2D web map to a 3D web scene dynamically. We’ll investigate what gets preserved when performing this toggle.
I am currently viewing a web map of Victoria, which is where our office is based, and I’m holding the right click menu. We are using the 4.X Javascript API and I actually have the ability to rotate the map. In the top right corner here, I also have a 2D to 3D toggle button that I can select to jump into 3D.
Before doing so, let’s do a couple of options. I’m going to identify some features on the map, and I can refine this. We have some water mains, buildings, and some fire hydrants. Maybe I’m interested in these four fire hydrants and we can see them on the map. Let’s add focus. Here I’m in focus, and the other four are selected. Additionally, I might want to change the base map, so let’s change the base map to ‘imagery.’ That’s looking pretty good!
When I click the option to switch to 3D, the results and the base map imagery, as well as the layers within my web map, are being processed and passed through to the web scene. I can rotate the map here and see the downtown Victoria harbor. Our office is just along here, and here we can see that the one hydrant I made active is highlighted. I have the four other hydrants that have been selected here, and my base map imagery got passed through. If I go back and clear these highlights, the one other thing that gets passed through is the layer list. If I was to toggle off these hydrants and turn on some tax parcels – and if I switch over to 2D – we can see that I now have my tax parcels toggled, there’s no fire hydrants, and my rotation has still been maintained. I can always reset my rotation to the default orientation, if I select that option there. I can also turn layers on and off to go back to my default extent. That’s what all gets preserved. In summary, the current viewpoint (the center of the map) and the rotation gets preserved. The layer visibility, and any markup that you’ve added gets preserved as well.
Let’s see if I can draw some markups on the map. If I draw a little polygon here and go to 3D, we should see that markup is also preserved as well. Any highlights and selections that we apply will also be included in the 3D rotation.
How you configure this so that you can toggle between the 2D web map and 3D web scene is fairly simple. Here you can see that there is this ‘Map’ tab here, and this is where you can choose the web map that you want to use, as well as the web scene. The key thing with both the web map and web scene is that you want to include the same layers that have the same URL or underlying layer ID.
Here I can see this is my capital city 2D web map, which is right here, and these are my associated layers, and if we go back, we can also see that I got a web scene called the Capital City Web 3D, which is here. The underlying layers I used in my 2D web map and my 3D web scene are the same. So if I select this fire hydrant layer, we can see the underlying map service that is being hosted in ArcGIS Online, which contains my fire hydrant layer. If I select my 2D web map, this layer, it’s going to take me to the same URL: CapitalCity_Web_Editable. It’s the exact same URL and they both share the same underlying map service. That’s important if you want to maintain that bidirectional integration between your web map and web scene.
What’s also cool is that there is another template in here called “Compass Points,” and this also just shows that the markup you apply can by synchronized across web scenes as well. So here I’ve got a web map, and I got four different web scenes showing the north, east, west, and south orientations. If I use the ‘I want to’ menu and draw a polygon, maybe around this boat here, we can see once I finish that I have now created that boat and I can visualize it in all four of my orientations, which is pretty interesting.
I think that wraps it up. That’s essentially how you can create Geocortex Web applications that allow your end users to move seamlessly between 2D and 3D applications. Bye for now!”
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