Zones

Zones are named areas you draw on a scene, such as a workbench, a safety area, a product display, or a loading bay. Once you save a zone, Cognitive3D records when each session enters and leaves it and how long each visit lasts, so you can measure activity in the areas that matter without adding Custom Events or shipping a new build.

You can compare zone activity across sessions in the Zones report, count historical data inside any shape with Analyze, and use zones as steps in Objectives.

Concepts

A shape is a single area drawn on a scene. It can be a rectangle, a circle, or a sphere.
A zone is a named collection of one or more shapes. A zone covers the combined area of all its shapes. For example, a staging area made up of two separate bays can be a single zone.
A visit is a continuous period a session spends inside a zone. Each visit records when the session entered and left the zone, and how long it stayed.

Visit types

Every saved zone tracks three types of visit at the same time:

Head position counts a visit while the participant's head is inside the zone. Use it when physical presence matters, such as standing in a safety area during a drill or a robot entering its assigned area.
Gazed in counts a visit while the point the participant is looking at is inside the zone. Use it when attention matters more than position, such as looking at a display from across the room.
Gazed through counts a visit while the participant's line of sight passes through the zone on its way to the point they are looking at.

Cognitive3D ignores visits shorter than 0.5 seconds and merges visits separated by a gap shorter than 0.5 seconds. If a session changes scene while inside a zone, the visit continues as long as the new scene contains one of the zone's shapes.

Zones only count visits in new sessions

Cognitive3D counts visits only for sessions recorded after you save a zone. The Collecting since column in the zones table shows when each zone started counting. To explore sessions you have already recorded, use Analyze.

Opening Zones

Select a scene and scene version on the Scenes page, then select the Zones tab.

The page displays the scene in 3D with a panel on the side. The panel has two modes:

Edit draws, names, and saves zones.
Analyze draws temporary shapes and counts historical data inside them.

Below the scene, the All zones in this project table lists every zone in the project.

Creating a zone

Select Edit in the panel. The scene opens in the Top-down view, which you need for drawing.

Drawing tools

Select a tool from the toolbar, then draw on the floor plan of the scene. The keyboard shortcut for each tool is shown in brackets.

Select (V) selects existing shapes. Shift-click to select more than one shape.
Rectangle (R) draws a rectangle. Drag on the floor plan to set its size.
Circle (C) draws a circle. Drag on the floor plan to set its size.
Sphere draws a sphere.
Trace (T) draws a freehand outline. Drag around an enclosed area and release. Cognitive3D converts the outline into up to four rectangles.
Polygon (P) draws an outline point by point. Click to place each corner, then click the red start point or press Enter to close the outline. Cognitive3D converts the outline into up to four rectangles.

Press Esc to cancel the current drawing. Press Delete or Backspace to remove the selected shape.

Rectangles and circles extend infinitely upward by default. To restrict a shape to a height range, see Shape settings.

Use the slider on the left side of the scene to vertically slice the scene geometry. This hides ceilings and roofs so you can draw inside a building.

Previewing in 3D

Select Preview in 3D to view the shapes as 3D volumes in the scene. Select Top-down to return to drawing, or Reset view to reset the camera.

In the 3D view, you can:

Click a shape to select it, then drag it to move it.
Drag the arrows above and below a shape to adjust its top and bottom.
Double-click a shape to enter rotation mode, then drag a coloured ring to rotate the shape around that axis. You cannot rotate spheres.

Shape settings

Select a shape to display its settings in the panel. Enter exact values here instead of drawing by hand.

Name sets the name of the shape or zone.
Width (m), Length (m), and Rotation (°) size and rotate a rectangle.
Radius (m) sizes a circle or sphere.
Centre X (m) and Centre Z (m) position the shape on the floor plan.
Limit height restricts a rectangle or circle to a vertical range. Enable it to set the Floor offset (m) and Height (m).

Grouping shapes into a zone

Cognitive3D groups all the shapes you draw before saving into a single draft zone, named Zone 1, Zone 2, and so on. Rename the zone to something meaningful, such as Loading Zone or Workbench.

To make a shape its own zone, select it and press Ungroup. To copy a shape, press Duplicate.

Saving

Unsaved zones are drafts. The bottom of the panel shows how many unsaved drafts you have.

Press Save changes to save your drafts. A confirmation dialog opens.
Press Discard drafts to remove all unsaved changes.

You cannot modify a saved zone

Saving a zone marks it as in use and locks its shapes, which keeps visit data consistent over time. You can still rename a saved zone. To change its shape, select a shape and press Duplicate to edit a copy, or delete the zone and draw it again.

Cognitive3D starts counting visits for sessions recorded after you save.

Managing zones

The All zones in this project table lists each zone with the following columns:

Name and Description identify the zone.
Scenes lists the scenes that contain the zone's shapes.
Shapes shows how many shapes the zone contains.
Footprint shows the zone's area.
Objectives lists the objectives that use the zone.
Collecting since shows the date the zone started counting visits.

To delete a saved zone, select it and press Delete, then type the zone's name to confirm. You cannot delete a zone that an objective uses. Update or remove the objective step first.

Analyze

Analyze counts data already recorded inside a shape, without saving a zone. Use it to explore an area and refine its boundary before you save a zone to measure it going forward.

Select Analyze in the panel. The panel displays two lists:

Zones on this scene lists your saved zones on the current scene.
Scratch · not saved lists temporary shapes you draw in Analyze. Draw them with the Box (R) or Sphere tool. Press Clear to remove all scratch shapes.

Choose what to count:

Gaze counts gaze points inside each shape.
HMD position counts head positions inside each shape.
Events counts Custom Events recorded inside each shape. Events recorded without a position are never counted.

For Gaze and HMD position, each shape shows the time spent inside it, summed across all sessions. For Events, each shape shows the number of events. Each result also shows its share of the scene total.

Analyze applies the filters at the top of the page and the selected scene version, so you can narrow results to specific sessions, participants, or date ranges.

Analyze limitations

You cannot rotate scratch shapes.
Analyze cannot count saved zones that contain circles or rotated rectangles yet.
If a zone contains overlapping shapes that Analyze cannot combine exactly, Analyze counts the overlapping areas more than once and marks the result with ≈.
If a zone has shapes on other scenes, Analyze counts only the shapes on the current scene.
Gaze and HMD position counts include up to the first 65,536 sessions. Events counts include up to the first 10,000 sessions.

Zones report

The Zones report summarizes which zones sessions enter, how long they stay, and where they start. Open the Dashboards page, then select Zones under Templates. Select a scene from the dropdown at the top of the report.

The report uses Head position visits and includes the following widgets:

Sessions Visiting a Zone shows how many sessions entered at least one zone.
Sessions by Zone shows how many sessions entered each zone.
Zone Map shows the zones on the scene, with the number of sessions and total time in each.
Zone Heatmap shows where participants stood inside a selected zone.
Share of Time by Zone compares the total time spent in each zone.
Time in Zone shows the average time each visiting session spent in each zone.
First Zone Entered shows the first zone each session entered.
Sessions Visiting a Zone Over Time shows the number of visiting sessions per day, week, or month.

You can also add these widgets to custom dashboards from the Spatial category. Each widget can use its own scene.

Zone objectives

Use zones as steps in Objectives to turn location and duration into pass or fail criteria. For example, an objective can require a trainee to reach an inspection point and stay there for at least 10 seconds.

To create a zone objective from the Zones page, select a saved zone and press Create objective, or press + on the zone's row in the table. This opens the Create Objective dialog with a zone step already added. You must save a draft zone before you can use it in an objective.

You can also add a zone step to any objective by selecting the Zone step type. A zone step has the following settings:

Zone selects the zone to evaluate. The list shows zones on the objective's scene first, followed by zones elsewhere in the project.
Visit type selects Head position, Gazed in, or Gazed through. The default is Head position. See Visit types.
Occurrence sets the number of Visits the step requires.
Add a dwell-time condition requires each visit to last a minimum number of seconds. Visits shorter than this do not count toward the occurrence.

For example, to require the participant to visit the Safety Area zone twice and stay at least 10 seconds each time:

Set Zone to Safety Area.
Set Occurrence to At least 2 Visits.
Enable Add a dwell-time condition.
Set Stays For to 10 Seconds.

Zone steps evaluate only sessions recorded after you saved the zone. The step shows the date it evaluates from.

Zones in Session Replay

Display zones while you review a session in Session Replay. Open the Advanced menu and enable Spaces. Zones appear as labelled volumes in the scene, and you can show or hide each one individually.

Each visit appears as a coloured bar on the timeline. Hover over a bar to see when the participant entered and left the zone. Click it to jump to that moment. Session Replay shows visits based on head position.

Permissions

Organization Admins and Project Admins can create, edit, and delete zones. Organization Observers and Project Observers can view zones. Analyze also requires access to aggregated project data. See Roles and Permissions.