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Writing solids


fdw
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I wonder if anyone knows a knows what would be a good format to write out solid geometry. I have worked with filegeodatabase but that is multipatch. I need spatial indexing to be able to use a spatial intersect with a feature reader. So a big dataset with solids where we often only need a few of.

The multipatch feature class (FGDB) kind of works but then I need a solidbuilder and that takes a lot of time.

Thank you!

Best answer by virtualcitymatt

fdw wrote:

@david_r yes I guess that will problaby work for our use case. Is there any other format you could think of that supports this?

FFS does seem like a good option. But I would also like to mention that a solid builder isn’t always required. You can also use a GeometryCoercer to coerce a CompositeSurface into a Brep and it’s much faster. 

Another option would be storing the Solid Geometry and an attribute (e.g., GeoemtryExtractor)? Then in your workflow replace the Solid with a 2D representation (Polygon) which can be used as a spatial query.

Other options for Solids include CityJSON and CityGML, however, you can’t work with a spatial index there. But there is the 3DCityDB which is the database version of CityGML (PostGIS).

 

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3 replies

david_r
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  • June 20, 2025

If you’re only ever going to read it back into FME (guess based on the mention of the FeatureReader), you could look into using FMEs own native format, FFS:

https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-ReadersWriters/ffs/ffs.htm


fdw
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  • June 23, 2025

@david_r yes I guess that will problaby work for our use case. Is there any other format you could think of that supports this?


virtualcitymatt
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fdw wrote:

@david_r yes I guess that will problaby work for our use case. Is there any other format you could think of that supports this?

FFS does seem like a good option. But I would also like to mention that a solid builder isn’t always required. You can also use a GeometryCoercer to coerce a CompositeSurface into a Brep and it’s much faster. 

Another option would be storing the Solid Geometry and an attribute (e.g., GeoemtryExtractor)? Then in your workflow replace the Solid with a 2D representation (Polygon) which can be used as a spatial query.

Other options for Solids include CityJSON and CityGML, however, you can’t work with a spatial index there. But there is the 3DCityDB which is the database version of CityGML (PostGIS).

 


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