3BUGS: Representing Building Geometries Extracted from Point Clouds

A template for representing basic building forms, termed 3BUGS, is proposed and demonstrated in a workflow fed with dense point clouds. The template describes building primitives using transformed rings for building geometry specification. Its major features include: 1) independent specification of constituent parts of primitives, namely, floor, walls, and roof; 2) specification of common floor shapes (rectangular, round, and polygonal); 3) vertical and non-vertical walls; 4) standard and arbitrary roof shapes; 5) manual and automated production of primitives and 6) supports the level of detail 2 (LoD2) of the CityGML standard. Preliminary tests have shown that the 3BUGS can be efficiently used for building representations and some transformations without making the geometry explicit.