An Annotation Instruction is a specification of what you want to be annotated, but also an explanation or guidance of how you want it to be annotated. For example, you may specify that you would like to annotate the Classes cars and pedestrians. In addition, you may also want to clarify class-related annotation rules in a separate guideline document, for example, that the 3D bounding box annotations around each car should not include the side mirrors.

Where can I find it?

Defining your Annotation Instruction is done in the project where you want the annotations delivered. The tool is available under the tab Annotation Instruction.

You can have multiple revisions of your annotation instruction. This becomes important when a version of your instruction has been used in production. Once used in production, it has to be left in that state to keep a version-controlled history that allows us to go back and see which version was used when producing a specific annotation. As you learn more about your dataset, you probably want to update your instruction, which is handled by creating new revisions.

A newly created revision will always be in draft mode. The following flowchart describes the different states a revision must go through to be available to use in production.

All revisions that are either published or ready for production are visible to every project manager with access to the specific project. Revisions in draft mode can either be private or public.

Each revision contains Classes, Class Properties, Scene Properties, and a Guideline. A description of each part can be found below.

A class is a description of what type of objects you want to have annotated, e.g., cars or traffic signs.

Geometry Type

The Geometry Type of the class determines which tool you want it to be annotated with, e.g., a 3D cube or a semantic segmentation polygon. Each annotated instance/object of a class will get a unique ID in the exported content. You can connect Class Properties to your class in order to annotate object attributes, e.g. if a car is parked or not. 

We currently support the following Geometry Types:

Any property added to a classification can be used under a condition of another property.
This is also available in Scene properties.

With this feature, users can group classes into a class collection and add properties to it.

Class collections are created in the classifications tab. Simply select the classes you want in your collection with the left-hand checkboxes and then click the Create New Class button at the bottom of the screen.

If you want to annotate specific attributes on a class object you can add Class Properties. These can be reused for multiple classes in the revision. We support a variety of class Property Types ranging from true or false (boolean) questions, to drawing sub-objects within your annotated object.

Which properties you can connect to your class depends on its geometry type. Some property types, like Horizontal reference line, are only available for 2D bounding box geometries.

We currently support the following Property Types:

Scene Properties are questions/attributes on the uploaded scene instead of the class, for example, what the weather is. They are very similar to class properties, except that you can't use property types only applicable for classes, e.g., connect object aren't available.



Configuration contains various advanced global task settings. Most of these settings can be edited in the UI, but it is also to edit settings throught the JSON editor since some advanced and experimental features are not yet available in the UI.



A guideline is a document that describes how to annotate.

Below are some tips and tricks to help you succeed when creating your Annotation Instruction.

All items that can be moved and rearranged, e.g.

will also appear in the same order for the annotators in the Task view. Placing these entities in an intuitive order will help the annotator while annotating!

While adding classes, class properties, etc., you can easily verify that the annotation instruction looks and behaves as intended by using the preview tool.

You can select the type of scene you would like to preview the revision for. Options are a generic single-lidar, generic multi-lidar, or a specific scene by providing its UUID.

The preview tool will open the instruction together with some dummy data in the Task view. This is done by simply pressing the preview button.

You can also share the preview link by copying the URL if you want someone else to have a look at your work.