Creating Simple Features from an External Server

You can create objects containing a list of geometric features (point, line, or polygon) imported from a WFS server.

WFS datasources are created through City Upload Assistant.

Before you begin:
  • You cannot display heatmap on a WFS point layer.
  • Clustering, heatmap, and City Attribute Table are not available.
  • The external WFS server must be able to return features in GeoJSON format. The GML format (mandatory in WFS standard) is neither interpreted by client-side applications, nor converted by the Globe service proxy.
  • The number of geometeries and attributes displayed in the Properties panel correspond to what was provided by the external WFS server at the time the dataset was created.
    Recommendation: Whenever the external WFS datasource has a significant change in its geometry count, or in its set of attributes, add the dataset again to your experience to update the values stored in Globe service at the time the dataset is prepared or updated.
See Also
About Datasets
Creating Simple Features
Simple Feature Representation Attributes
Displaying Object Properties
  1. From the Referential section of the action bar, click Create Simple Feature .
  2. From 3DSpace, drag the appropriate WFS file onto the "drop source data here" zone displayed on the referential.
  3. Define the point representing the feature position.
  4. Define the following parameters:
    OptionDescription
    Dataset Name Name of the dataset.
    Publish Dataset Select this check box to publish the dataset on the server. This lets you publish your experience to a City navigation experience afterwards.

    Published datasets are identified by the symbol in the Published column of the City Referential panel.

    Levels Lets you define the subdivision levels of the quadtree. For each level you add, the corresponding size (in meters) for each tile is displayed in the Tile Size area on the right.

    The tile size depends on the referential's bounding box.

    Important: All attributes are exposed, you cannot choose to expose only some of them.

  5. Click OK.
    A pop-up message informs you when the creation is successful and the City Referential panel opens (this is the case whenever a dataset is created).

    An alert is also displayed under the top bar to inform you about the preparation status (success or failure). This alerts is displayed for a few seconds but you can click from the top bar to open the 3DNotification Center and display your notification history. For more information, see Dashboard Top Bar.

    Note: As this notification is displayed only when the dataset is prepared, it might not be immediately displayed for large datasets that take time to be processed.

  6. From the Available City Datasets area of the City Referential panel, drag the dataset to the referential when its status switches to Ready.
    The dataset is displayed in the tree on the left with the icon next to the dataset name to indicate that the dataset is connected to an external WFS server.

    The associated image appears on the selected referential.



    Geometric features imported from a WFS server have a SimpleFeatureProxy type.

    The SimpleFeatureProxy dataset or WFS datasource only contains a link to the WFS server URL, and the name (identifier) of the layer to load. It does not contain the description of the geometric features and their attributes. This means that if the layer is updated on the external server, this update is immediately visible and available within City apps. There is no need to update the datasource or the dataset.

    This also means that the geometries and attributes are not persisted within the Globe service. If the WFS server URL or the layer disappear, you cannot retrieve the geometries that were previously loaded.

    In addition, there is no way to freeze the state of those layers in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. All City contributors who have read access to the WFS datasource document can load and display the latest version of the pointed layer in the context of the parent referential.