Introduction

3D data and 3D visualization has been a key to industrial applications for more than 25 years. While modern technology enables an increasing number of incredible software solutions by the day, when it comes to 3D and Mixed Reality solutions, industry is facing challenges not even the ever-increasing computing power of cutting-edge hardware is able to overcome.

One of many reasons is the explosion of variation and complexity of modern manufacturing data and processes, accompanied by an increasing demand to access such data dynamically and within unknown hardware and network conditions. While moving from monolithic applications and expert tools to continuous services and APIs for cloud-first applications, traditional document-based management and distribution of 3D assets doesn’t fit into modern software environments. The future is driven by loosely coupled service interfaces, where 3D data and Mixed Reality applications more than often are treated as foreign bodies. While, at the same time, for the creation of digital twins, the demand for high-quality 3D data to be made available for work processes all along the value chain becomes increasing relentlessly.

instant3Dhub is a unique solution for web-scale visual-computing-as-a-service to enable 3D data as a key for the digital transformation. Visual computing covers not only the generation of 3D images from data, but also any generation of knowledge from images and their synthesis. The strong interdependency of computing power, algorithms and 3D data size can only be dissolved by flexibly distributing computation between clients and services, even for highly complicated tasks, while seamlessly integration with modern web-scale software infrastructures.

This is the promise of instant3Dhub’s 3D data virtualization architecture: Any Data, Any Device, Any Size - instantly! It’s achieved by combining standardized gateways to connect any kind of 3D data, made available by a broad range of front-end APIs and applications. In-between the two-sided API’s, instant3Dhub’s 3D Spaces serve as a unified concept for process and tool-chain integration along the full value chain, to dynamically connect 3D data and business data and to combine session management with live collaboration while supporting various application and data provisioning patterns.

This integration pattern provides all classes of stakeholders with the required flexibility to build 3D applications, which perfectly fit their specific requirements. This documentation provides information for three classes of stakeholders, covering topics from low-level infrastructure integration, through documentation of the various APIs, up to user tutorials for instant3Dhub’s default front-end applications.