Case Study: Shell Canada achieves on-demand 3D PDF visualization for non-technical stakeholders with Safe Software's FME Server

Shell Canada - Customer Case Study

Shell Canada’s GIS & Geo‑Information team faced a common oil and gas challenge: making vast, complex spatial datasets accessible to non‑technical stakeholders who don’t have GIS or geoscience software. Exploration and production workflows rely on many raster and vector sources (well bores, LiDAR DEMs, aerial imagery, contours, pipelines, roads, hydrography, surveys, etc.), and project teams needed a simple, consolidated way to view that information on demand.

The team used FME Server to assemble and style data from ArcSDE into textured 3D models and deliver them as self‑contained 3D PDFs. Users draw an area of interest on a web map, FME Server retrieves and prepares the mixed 2D/3D sources, and the resulting interactive PDF (viewable in Acrobat Reader) lets stakeholders pan, zoom, rotate and query attributes. The solution gave non‑technical users immediate, intuitive access to rich spatial context—improving visualization, communication and decision‑making across projects.

Shell

Cameron Watson

Supervisor, GIS & Geo-Information