Google Earth is an application that provides a 3D interface to view imagery from anywhere on Earth. Google provides a Google Earth viewer as a free download from http://earth.google.com/.

With Google Earth, the AEC projects that you design, document, and maintain now can be visualized "in situ". Google Earth gives you an aerial view of geometry and geography, but it is not intended to be a detailed CAD viewer. Its greatest value is in providing a rich, accurate and intuitive backdrop for your AEC projects.

While Google Earth is designed and optimized for spatially large designs, it is not intended for visualizing geometric detail. Including excessive detail will quickly exceed the current capacity of Google Earth. For this reason it is important to carefully select and export only the geometry that is both visible and valuable to Google Earth.

MicroStation PowerDraft provides data to Google Earth as KML documents, an XML based data structure for creating and sharing geographic data. Geometry exported to KML retains the Reference File and Level (layer) structure defined in the model. This lets you selectively control the display of individual levels or reference files within Google Earth. Saved views are also saved to KML so that they can be used to navigate to views of interest in Google Earth.

To export data such as material properties or texture maps, use the Format control in the Google Earth Settings dialog. Setting the Format to KML Only will export material colors. Setting the Format to KML and Collada will export material colors and textures.

To export non-graphical business items, use the Include Properties control in the Google Earth Settings dialog. You can export all, none, or a subset of the business items contained in a 3D design file. To export a subset of the business items, use the Property Filter dialog to create a Property Filter file.