In ArcGIS, you can access a collection of geographic information from around the globe including 3D layers and 3D basemaps. In addition to 3D data hosted by Esri, you can work with publicly available web layers and web scenes provided by other users.
This ready-to-use content can be a reference to your data and provide geospatial context. For example, you can visualize a planned building and view it with surrounding buildings.
Workflows
You can add a basemap to an existing scene or use a default basemap when creating a scene. You can switch a basemap, for example, to view the same data in a different style such as dark gray canvas.
You can search ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World for 3D data hosted by Esri such as OpenStreetMap buildings, OpenStreetMap thematic trees, and OpenStreetMap realistic trees. In addition, you can add publicly available web layers to a scene. For example, a municipality may provide point cloud data and make it publicly available in ArcGIS Online. You can search for the layer using keywords such as point cloud or the name of the municipality and add the data to your scene.
Considerations
To consume ready-to-use 3D layers, you can review the descriptions and credits (attribution) to assure you are using the data in the way the author intended. Web layers hosted in ArcGIS Living Atlas are regularly reviewed and updated. If you use publicly available layers and scenes, the author determines when to update, deprecate, or delete the 3D content. When a web layer is deleted, remove the layer from the scene, since it will show as a broken layer because the data source is missing.
Required software
To use all publicly available web layers, web scenes, and basemaps, you must have an ArcGIS Online account. For clients such as ArcGIS Pro, for example, you can use the default basemaps without signing in to ArcGIS Online.
The subsections below provide additional information about ready-to-use content.
ArcGIS help documentation
See the following ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Enterprise help topics:
- Basemaps (ArcGIS Pro)
- Get Map Data (ArcGIS CityEngine)
- Get started creating scenes (ArcGIS Online)
- Add data (ArcGIS Earth)
- Switch basemap (ArcGIS Online)
- Add ArcGIS Living Atlas layers to maps or scenes (ArcGIS Enterprise)
ArcGIS blogs, articles, stories, and technical papers
The following provide guidance regarding concepts, software functionality, and workflows:
Tutorials
The following guided, hands-on tutorials are based on real-world situations:
Developer resources
Use the following resources for automating and customizing workflows:
Esri community
Use the Esri 3D community to connect, collaborate, ask questions, and share experiences.