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Clipping and Splitting a 3D Tiles Mesh by Polygon Boundaries in FME

  • June 24, 2026
  • 1 reply
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bayram
Contributor
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Hello,

I have a mesh model in 3D Tiles (JSON tileset) format. I can open it in Bentley Descartes, but the performance is very slow due to the model size. I would like to use the JSON Fragmenter transformer in FME to split the mesh according to polygons/areas that I have created. After splitting, I want to export each clipped section again as a separate 3D Tiles (JSON tileset) dataset.

However, I have not been able to achieve this workflow successfully. Could you please help me understand the correct process for clipping and exporting a 3D Tiles mesh by predefined boundaries in FME?

Any guidance, example workflow, or recommended transformers would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

1 reply

donalmateer
Safer
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Hi ​@bayram 
 

FME doesn't currently have a reader for 3D Tiles, only a writer, so JSONFragmenter can only pull the tileset structure (boundingVolume, children, uri, and so on), not the actual mesh geometry. That's why clipping and re-exporting an existing 3D Tiles dataset by polygon isn't possible in FME today.

I encourage you to click this link and add your vote and use case, it's the best way to help this get prioritized: https://community.safe.com/ideas/support-for-b3dm-reader-ogc-3d-tiles-39015

A couple of things worth trying instead. If you still have the original ContextCapture project (your third screenshot looks like a ContextCapture Production_1 output), try defining your polygon boundaries as separate areas of interest there and running a production per boundary, exporting straight to 3D Tiles. If you have the mesh in a format FME can read, like OBJ or CityGML, try clipping it with a Deaggregator plus GeometryCoercer set to fme_polygon. If a clipped section is still one large mesh, adding a Tiler transformer before the Cesium 3D Tiles writer may help too.

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