Welcome to the Cumulocity IoT Digital Twin Manager (DTM) application.
This application allows you to create and manage assets around your physical connected devices in Cumulocity IoT using a digital representation of a physical hierarchy of assets and devices. Here, assets can be used to structure and describe devices in logical hierarchies as encountered in the real world environment to help with visualizing the hierarchy in a digital setting.
Once the asset hierarchy is created in the DTM application, the hierarchy can be applied to other applications such as OEE or Machine portal. It saves a lot of time and effort, as the hierarchy is created only once and can be used directly in other Cumulocity IoT hosted applications.
Requirements
Your tenant must be subscribed to the Digital Twin Manager application and the Dtm-ms microservice.
Related topics
See Subscribed applications for more information on how to access the DTM application in your tenant.
Concepts
Digital Twin
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or system. It is typically used in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT) to help visualize and analyze how a physical object is performing, or to predict how it might behave in the future.
You can use digital twins to simulate and test the performance of complex systems, such as buildings, factories, or even entire cities. By using digital twins, engineers and designers can better understand how a system works and identify potential problems before they occur.
In the Digital Twin Manager application, one asset represents one digital twin.
Digital twin attributes
A digital twin contains a number of attributes:
It represents a unique physical asset.
It is associated with a single, specific instance of a physical asset.
It continuously collects data (through sensors, devices, and so on).
It is continuously connected to the physical asset, updating itself with any change to the asset’s state, condition, and context.
It provides value through visualization, analysis, prediction, and optimization
Asset Hierarchy
An asset hierarchy is a structure that organizes multiple assets and devices into a hierarchy, allowing for the visualization and management of complex systems.
To create an asset hierarchy, execute the following steps. The example is based on a windmill as a physical device.
First identify the key systems, processes, and components to be included in order to define the scope of your asset hierarchy.
Based on your definitions create the hierarchy of all digital twins.
Determine the level of detail needed for each system, process, and component in the hierarchy. This helps to determine the level of accuracy and complexity required for each asset type. For a windmill this includes, for example, the tower’s height, the length of the blade and so on.
To portray the correct structure, first create a custom property for each component in the Digital twin library, see Asset types > Property library > Custom property types for details. The custom properties are later used in creating the individual asset types.
To create an asset type work from the smallest component to the largest. For a windmill that means to start with the asset type “blade”, followed by “rotor”, “tower”, and “nacelle” and finally “windmill”. Assign the required custom property to each asset type as well as the allowed contained asset types (for example, a windmill requires a rotor, which in turn requires rotor blades).
Afterwards, add the necessary asset instances. This process starts from the outer most level (for example, the windmill) and ends at the deepest level (for example, the blades).
Test and validate the asset hierarchy to ensure that it accurately represents the real-world system or process. This can involve simulating different scenarios and comparing the results to real-world data.
Continuously update and maintain the asset hierarchy as changes occur in the real-world system or process. This ensures that the hierarchy remains accurate and up to date.
