The Globe View

The globe view is SiteView's home screen. It displays all of your construction sites as pins on an interactive 3D globe powered by CesiumJS, giving you a real-world spatial overview of every site you manage.

Site Pins

Every site with a location set appears as a coloured pin on the globe. The pin colour indicates the site's current status:

Clicking a pin selects the site and opens a summary popup with the site name, status, and a button to navigate to the site detail page. This lets you quickly identify and jump to any site without leaving the globe.

💡 Tip

The colour coding gives you an instant visual summary of your portfolio. A cluster of green pins means active work in that area. Yellow pins highlight sites that need attention. Blue means the work is done.

Clustering

When you have many sites in the same area, or when you are zoomed out to a regional or national view, individual pins would overlap and become unreadable. SiteView automatically groups nearby pins into clusters.

A cluster appears as a circle with a number indicating how many sites it contains. As you zoom in, clusters break apart into individual pins. As you zoom out, pins merge back into clusters.

Clicking a cluster zooms the view to show the sites within it. This makes it easy to navigate to a specific area, even when you have hundreds of sites across a large region.

The Side Panel

On the left side of the globe view, a side panel lists all of your sites. The panel provides:

Site List

A scrollable list of all sites, showing each site's name, status badge, and tags. The list is sorted alphabetically by default.

Search

A search field at the top of the panel lets you filter the list by name. Start typing and the list narrows to matching sites in real time.

Click to Fly

Clicking a site in the side panel triggers a smooth fly-to animation — the globe rotates and zooms to centre on that site's location. This is the fastest way to navigate to a specific site when you know its name.

💡 Tip

Use the side panel search when you know the site name but are not sure where it is geographically. Type the name, click the result, and the globe flies you straight there.

Fly-To Animation

Selecting a site — either from the side panel or by clicking a pin on the globe — triggers a fly-to animation. The camera smoothly pans, tilts, and zooms from your current view to a close-up of the selected site. The animation takes roughly two to three seconds and gives you spatial context as you approach.

The fly-to landing position is close enough to see the site pin clearly while preserving enough surrounding context for orientation. From there, you can zoom in further or click through to the site detail page for full access to surveys, layers, and measurement tools.

Base Map Options

SiteView offers multiple base map styles to suit different viewing needs. You can switch between them using the base map selector in the bottom corner of the globe:

ℹ️ Did you know?

The Satellite base map requires a MapTiler API key to be configured. If no key is set, the Satellite option will not be available and the globe defaults to the Street or Outdoor base map. Street and Outdoor base maps work without any API key.

The base map you select is applied to the entire globe and persists across the session. In the site detail view, the same base map options are available alongside any survey imagery you have uploaded.

Navigating the Globe

SiteView uses standard CesiumJS navigation controls. Whether you are using a mouse, trackpad, or touch screen, the controls are intuitive:

Mouse Controls

• Scroll wheel — zoom in and out
• Left-click and drag — rotate the globe (pan)
• Right-click and drag — tilt the camera angle (pitch)
• Middle-click and drag — rotate the camera around the viewing point

Trackpad Controls

• Pinch — zoom in and out
• Two-finger drag — pan across the globe
• Two-finger tilt — adjust camera pitch

Keyboard Controls

• Arrow keys — pan the view in any direction
• Plus / Minus — zoom in and out
• Scroll — zoom (same as mouse wheel)

💡 Tip

Tilting the camera with a right-click drag is one of the most useful navigation techniques. It lets you see your sites from an oblique angle rather than straight down, which is much better for understanding terrain and elevation. Try tilting the view when looking at hilly or mountainous sites.

Touch Screen and Tablet

On touch devices, the globe supports standard touch gestures:

• Single finger drag — pan the globe
• Pinch — zoom in and out
• Two-finger rotate — rotate the view
• Two-finger tilt — adjust the camera pitch

The side panel remains accessible on tablets. On smaller screens, the panel may collapse to a toggle button to preserve map space.

Globe View vs. Site Detail

The globe view is your overview — a way to see all sites, navigate between them, and get a spatial sense of your portfolio. It does not show survey imagery, design overlays, or measurement tools. Those features are available on the site detail page, which you reach by selecting a site and clicking through.

Think of the globe view as your map of all sites, and the site detail page as your workspace for an individual site.

What's Next?

• Site detail & map — learn about the site detail view where surveys, layers, and measurements live
• Creating your first site — if you have not created a site yet, start here
• Site register — the list-based alternative for managing sites without the globe