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3D Repo

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3D Repo Ltd
Company typePrivately held company
IndustrySoftware
FoundedApril 28, 2014
Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Key people
John Davis
(Chairman)
Dr Jozef Doboš
(CEO)
Website3drepo.org

3D Repo Ltd is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform provider of Building Information Modeling (BIM) solutions.

The company was founded in 2014 by Jozef Doboš as a spin-off from his Engineering Doctorate in Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation at University College London.[1][2] The research titled Management and Visualisation of Non-linear History of Polygonal 3D Models[3] was supervised by Prof Anthony Steed and Prof Niloy Mitra, and funded by EPSRC and Arup Foresight.[4][5] Over the years, 3D Repo won a large number of awards[6][7][8][9] and was involved in many high-profile public as well as private construction projects including London Olympic Stadium,[10] Wood Wharf,[11] Crossrail[12] and Smart Motorways.[13][14] 3D Repo also provides R&D and VR capability to large construction companies such as Balfour Beatty[15] and Skanska.[16] The lead investor behind the company is an early stage venture capital fund Sussex Place Ventures owned by London Business School.[17][18] 3D Repo is an organizational member of British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT.[19][20] In 2015, 3D Repo was named one of top 20 tech innovators in the UK.[1]

History

[edit]

Academic research

[edit]

3D Repo version control system—still in its early stages of doctoral research—was originally demonstrated at the joint SIGGRAPH and Web3D conference in Los Angeles, United States in August 2012 featuring the King's Cross Station Redevelopment project by Arup.[21][22] Later that year, 3D Repo attended an invited lecture at German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken, Germany which led to a collaboration and development of the first REST API for the system.[23][24] The front-end visualization was programmed in XML3D and was featured at Web3D 2013 in San Sebastián, Spain. The main scientific advancement was the introduction of externalized web 3D resources in various encodings that enabled interactivity and prevented web browsers from becoming unresponsive while loading very large 3D models over the Internet.[25] SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 in Singapore also introduced a native Android application and the very first 3D differencing tool Interactive 3D Diff.[26][27][28] Subsequent collaboration with Prof Niloy Mitra at University College London led to the development of a reverse engineering system 3D Timeline presented at Eurographics 2014 in Strasbourg, France.[29] Unlike Interactive 3D Diff which required prior correspondence information, i.e. matching object-level identifiers between revisions, 3D Timeline reverse engineered the relationships and changes between 3D components over multiple revisions without prior correspondence.[30]

Commercial development

[edit]

Based on the potential commercial impact of 3D Repo, the project was awarded VEIV Advance Scholarship[31] in order to devise a business plan. This was nominated for the Royal Academy of Engineering ERA Foundation Entrepreneurs Award in December 2013.[32] A commercial company was registered in April 2014[33] following the award of an Innovate UK Smart grant which also helped to secure initial angel funding.[34] In the second half of 2014, the project was seconded to Balfour Beatty via the Breakthrough Information Technology Exchange programme applying the new technology to the London Olympic Stadium Transformation project.[35] This led to the development and application of Virtual reality for health and safety[36] training on the M5 Smart Motorway in the UK[13] which was nominated for British Construction Industry Awards in 2017.[17]

In 2015, 3D Repo was also invited to join the third cohort of Cognicity Challenge by Canary Wharf Group.[8] The challenge consisted of an intensive twelve-week incubation programme designed to identify and solve construction problems faced by Canary Wharf in collaboration with Intel. The resulting Building Information Modeling platform 3drepo.io won the Virtual Design and Construction category, a £50,000 cash prize and a paid pilot deploying the solution to the Wood Wharf development.[37][38] This enabled design coordination and federation of large 3D models via modern WebGL-enabled web browsers.[39] The inner workings of the platform utilizing the X3DOM renderer developed in collaboration with Fraunhofer Institute were presented at the 20th anniversary Web3D conference in Heraklion, Greece.[40] The platform was subsequently expanded with experimental streaming capability using glTF data format[41] developed in collaboration with University College London. Further advanced cloud security provisions were developed in collaboration with British Telecom[42]

In 2017, 3D Repo unveiled version 2.0 based on the Unity game engine.[43] This technological interconnection received the Best Paper Award[44] at Web3D 2017 in Brisbane, Australia.[45] The company has been involved in several research projects aimed at pushing the boundaries of Open BIM, an open-source approach to BIM. One of these projects, called "AEC Delta Mobility,"[46] was funded by Innovate UK and aimed to increase the productivity of construction projects by over 15%. Another project, in partnership with eviFile, offered a combined mobile digital evidence and BIM solution.[47] In early 2021, the company launched 3D Send, a platform for secure sharing of BIM outputs. 3D Repo also collaborated with Epic Games to create a data delivery platform using Unreal Engine, which allows users to share massive 3D engineering models online.[48]

In April 2023, 3D Repo was acquired by Asite, a leading construction collaboration technology developer for an undisclosed sum with the aim to "provide customers with even more advanced solutions for managing their construction projects and help drive digitisation in construction to the next level".[49]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Tech Innovators 2015: 3D Repo Limited". Growth Business. 2015-08-07. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  2. ^ "3D Repo runs in MongoDB | MongoDB Blog". MongoDB. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  3. ^ "Management and Visualisation of Non-linear History of Polygonal 3D Models". 3D Repo - Collaborative online BIM platform. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  4. ^ Pigott, Simon. "Jozef Dobos". veiv.cs.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  5. ^ "Open source BIM platform to be piloted at Canary Wharf". New Civil Engineer. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  6. ^ "Construction Manager - Home". www.constructionmanagermagazine.com. 13 February 2017. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  7. ^ "MongoDB Innovation Award Winners". MongoDB. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  8. ^ a b "Cognicity Challenge tailors third group of smart city tech accelerator to new phase at Canary Wharf - 20.04.15 - Canary Wharf Group". Canary Wharf Group. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  9. ^ "EngD Student wins Bright Ideas Award". www.cs.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  10. ^ "3D modelling for the construction industry". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  11. ^ "3D Repo - BIM collaboration in a browser". aecmag.com. 19 December 2016. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  12. ^ "Crossrail trials Digital Asset management with 3D Repo". I3P. 2017-01-26. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  13. ^ a b "Balfour trials virtual reality safety training". www.constructionenquirer.com. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  14. ^ "3D Repo: New kid on the block | GeoConnexion". www.geoconnexion.com. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  15. ^ "Expert". Balfour Beatty plc. Archived from the original on 2017-12-31. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  16. ^ "Skanska UK wins funding for a trial to visualise big data | www.skanska.co.uk". www.skanska.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  17. ^ a b "3d repo virtual reality project shortlisted for british construction industry award | netMAGmedia Ltd". www.buildingconstructiondesign.co.uk. 25 September 2017. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  18. ^ "3D Repo | Sussex Place Ventures". Sussex Place Ventures. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  19. ^ "3D Repo becomes member of British Computer Society". 3D Repo - Collaborative online BIM platform. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  20. ^ "3D Repo - Non-linear Version Control using NoSQL MongoDB followed by AGM | Events List | Events calendar | Events | BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT". www.bcs.org. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  21. ^ Doboš, Jozef; Steed, Anthony (2012). "3D revision control framework". Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on 3D Web Technology. Web3D '12. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 121–129. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.385.2210. doi:10.1145/2338714.2338736. ISBN 9781450314329. S2CID 216756.
  22. ^ Doboš, Jozef; Steed, Anthony (2012). "3D diff: An interactive approach to mesh differencing and conflict resolution". ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Posters on - SIGGRAPH '12. SIGGRAPH '12. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 15:1. doi:10.1145/2343045.2343064. ISBN 9781450316835. S2CID 5661874.
  23. ^ "Campus Event Calendar: Jozef Dobos (10/08/2012 in D 3 2/VizCenter, DFKI)". domino.mpi-inf.mpg.de. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  24. ^ Doboš, Jozef; Sons, Kristian; Rubinstein, Dmitri; Slusallek, Philipp; Steed, Anthony (2013). "XML3DRepo". Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on 3D Web Technology. Web3D '13. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 47–55. doi:10.1145/2466533.2466537. ISBN 9781450321334. S2CID 8093886.
  25. ^ XML3DRepo: A REST API for Version Controlled 3D Assets on the Web, 2013-06-17, retrieved 2017-10-31
  26. ^ "3D Repo: open source Revision Control Framework for large 3D models". 3ders.org. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  27. ^ Doboš, Jozef; Simondetti, Alvise; Steed, Anthony (2012). "Visualizing 3D models in aid of public consultation". SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 Symposium on Apps. SA '12. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 9:1. doi:10.1145/2407696.2407705. ISBN 9781450319164. S2CID 15964763.
  28. ^ Doboš, Jozef; Steed, Anthony (2012). "3D Diff: An interactive approach to mesh differencing and conflict resolution". SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 Technical Briefs. SA '12. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 20:1–20:4. doi:10.1145/2407746.2407766. ISBN 9781450319157. S2CID 67749552.
  29. ^ Doboš, Jozef; Mitra, Niloy J.; Steed, Anthony (2014-05-01). "3D Timeline: Reverse engineering of a part-based provenance from consecutive 3D models". Computer Graphics Forum. 33 (2): 135–144. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.715.5283. doi:10.1111/cgf.12311. ISSN 1467-8659. S2CID 2196547.
  30. ^ 3D Timeline: Reverse Engineering of a Part-based Provenance from Consecutive 3D Models (EG 2014), 2014-01-23, retrieved 2017-10-31
  31. ^ Steed, Anthony. "UCL Centre VEIV Advance Scholarship". veiv.cs.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  32. ^ "CS EngD VEIV Student shortlisted for Entrepreneurs Award". www.cs.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  33. ^ "3D REPO LTD - Overview (free company information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  34. ^ "Meet our customers - 3D Repo - Innovate UK". innovateuk.blog.gov.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  35. ^ "BITE goes to the Olympic Stadium - Welcome to BITE - Breakthrough Information Technology Exchange". Welcome to BITE - Breakthrough Information Technology Exchange. 2015-09-09. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  36. ^ "Virtual reality ready to redefine health & safety in construction industry". Callidus Health & Safety. 2017-02-22. Archived from the original on 2017-12-31. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
  37. ^ "Canary Wharf Group Lays the Foundations for a Smarter City - 08.07.15 - Canary Wharf Group". Canary Wharf Group. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  38. ^ "3D Repo wins the Cognicity challenge by Canary Wharf Group". Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  39. ^ Wood Wharf Development in 3D Repo, 2016-11-24, retrieved 2017-10-31
  40. ^ Scully, Timothy; Doboš, Jozef; Sturm, Timo; Jung, Yvonne (2015). "3drepo.io". Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on 3D Web Technology. Web3D '15. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 235–243. doi:10.1145/2775292.2775312. ISBN 9781450336475. S2CID 618007.
  41. ^ Scully, Timothy; Friston, Sebastian; Fan, Carmen; Doboš, Jozef; Steed, Anthony (2016). "GLTF streaming from 3D repo to X3DOM". Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Web3D Technology (PDF). Web3D '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 7–15. doi:10.1145/2945292.2945297. ISBN 9781450344289. S2CID 5655347.
  42. ^ "3D Repo in a Secure Cloud Environment; a Case Study". 3D Repo - Collaborative online BIM platform. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  43. ^ "3D Repo releases version 2.0 of cross-platform BIM and geospatial collaboration software - Civil + Structural Engineer magazine". Civil + Structural Engineer magazine. 2017-10-26. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  44. ^ "Best Paper Award at Web3D 2017". 3D Repo - Collaborative online BIM platform. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
  45. ^ Friston, Sebastian; Fan, Carmen; Doboš, Jozef; Scully, Timothy; Steed, Anthony (2017). "3DRepo4Unity". Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on 3D Web Technology. Web3D '17. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 15:1–15:9. doi:10.1145/3055624.3075941. ISBN 9781450349550. S2CID 3150474.
  46. ^ Wilkinson, Paul (2019-04-09). "AEC Delta Mobility: open source 'differencing'". Extranet Evolution. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  47. ^ Wilkinson, Paul (2019-05-09). "eviFile and 3DRepo combine mobile and BIM". Extranet Evolution. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  48. ^ Wilkinson, Paul (2021-03-08). "3D Repo develops Unreal Engine-based 3D platform". Extranet Evolution. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  49. ^ "Asite acquires 3D Repo to enhance Digital Engineering Solutions". www.asite.com. 5 April 2023. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
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