How to Show Live Sensor Values in a Digital Building Twin
Drop labeled pins into a Digital Building Twin — show live sensor readings with name, value, color.
Conditional color tells an operator that something needs attention — a red zone, an amber unit. Sometimes they also need the number: not just "the cold store is in breach" but "the cold store is at 13.4°C." A drop-pin puts that exact reading in the model, anchored to the spot it belongs to.
A pin is a marker placed at a specific point in the scene. It shows the metric's name and its current value with units, and the pin itself takes the same conditional color as the reading — so it's both a label and a status light.
How do I pin a metric to the scene?
Pins are created from the Sensors panel, on a metric you've already set up (see Binding sensors and colors).
On the bottom toolbar, click Sensors and find the metric you want to pin.
On that metric, click Pin to scene.
The editor enters pick mode and shows the prompt Click on the scene to pin this metric.
Click the point in the model where the pin should sit — over the cold store, beside the pump, on the parking bay.
The pin appears at that point, showing the metric name and current value.
A pinned metric then offers two controls: Re-pin to move the marker to a new spot, and Unpin to remove it.
What does a pin show?
Each pin is a teardrop marker with a label floating above it. The label carries the metric's name and its current value with units — for example Temperature and 13.4°C. The device name is dropped from the label when the metric name starts with it. Readings are rounded for display to at most two decimal places, with trailing zeros dropped, so a sensor that reports 15.392933316005998 shows as 15.39°C; text and other non-numeric readings are shown as they arrive. The marker and label are colored by the metric's conditions, exactly the way bound objects are colored: a reading in the "breach" band makes the pin red, a reading in the "compliant" band makes it green.
So a pin does two jobs at once — it reports the precise number, and it shows status through color without anyone having to read the number at all.
How do pins work across floors?
A pin belongs to the floor it was placed on. In a multi-floor model, a pin placed on the third floor shows when the third floor is in view and stays out of the way on the others — so a tall building doesn't end up with every floor's pins overlapping. See Floors and levels.
How do I show or hide sensor pins?
The Sensors panel header has a Show sensor pins toggle. It appears once at least one metric is pinned, and switches every pin in the model on or off at once.
Turn pins off for a clean, color-only view — useful for a wall-display dashboard where the shape and color carry the message. Turn them on when operators need the exact figures. Whichever way the toggle is set when you save the widget is how the dashboard tile shows it.
When should I use a pin instead of color?
Color-only is enough for many objects — a parking bay doesn't need a number, occupied or free is the whole story. Reach for a pin when the value itself matters:
A cold store or freezer where the exact temperature is the compliance record.
A tank or silo where the fill percentage drives a refill decision.
A plant-room pump where pressure or flow is the reading an engineer acts on.
Any point where "how bad" matters as much as "there's a problem."
Pin the handful of readings that operators genuinely need as numbers, and leave the rest to color. A model peppered with pins is as hard to read as a spreadsheet; a few well-placed pins draw the eye exactly where it should go.
See also
Binding sensors and colors — Set up the metric a pin is based on
Floors and levels — How pins behave across floors
GPS anchoring — Anchor scene points to real-world coordinates
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