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vim-webgl-viewer

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vim-webgl-viewer

A high-performance 3D viewer and VIM file loader built on top of Three.JS.

1.0.4
Source
npm

Version published: 3 years ago

Weekly downloads: 387; increased by100.52%

Maintainers: 3

Weekly downloads

Created: 3 years ago

Source

VIM WebGL Viewer

Live Demo

Small Model Demo - Residence
Medium Model Demo - Medical Tower
Large Model Demo - Stadium (Warning: slow download times)

Overview

The VIM WebGL Viewer is an open-source high-performance 3D model viewer built on top of the popular Three.JS WebGL framework that specializes in loading extremely large AEC (Architectural/Engineering/Construction) models represented as VIM files.

The VIM WebGL viewer combines the Three.JS library with several common loaders and utilities, to reduce boilerplate code. It can be simply included via script tags or consumed using esm imports.

The VIM file format is a high-performance 3D scene format that supports rich BIM data, and can be easily extended to support other relational or non-relation data sets.

Unlike IFC the VIM format is already tessellated, and ready to render. This results in very fast load times. Unlike glTF the VIM format is faster to load, scales better, and has a consistent structure for relational BIM data.

Using the Viewer from a Web Page

Virtually the simplest usage of the VIM viewer is the following example:

<html>
<head>
    <title>VIM Viewer</title>
</head>
<body>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/three@0.133.1/build/three.min.js"></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/vim-webgl-viewer"></script>
    <script>
        var viewer = new vim.Viewer({
            url: 'https://vim.azureedge.net/samples/residence.vim',
            object: { rotation: { x: 270 } },
        });
    </script> 
</body>
</html>

Running Locally

Checkout repo
Run npm install to install all dependencies
Run npm run dev to launch a dev-server and watch for change
Navigate to http://localhost:3000 in your browser

Folder Structure

docs - this is the root folder for the GitHub page at https://vimaec.github.io/vim-webgl-viewer. The docs\index.html file uses the latest published default NPM release package (@latest), while the docs\index-dev.html uses the latest published dev NPM package (@dev). Also contains a mustache template and file for generating the various index.html files from
src - contains the TypeScript source code for the viewer and loader.
dist - created by running the build script for creating a distributable package. It contains three files after running the build script:
- dist\vim-webgl-viewer.es.js - an EcmaScript module
- dist\vim-webgl-viewer.iife.js - an immediately-invocable function expression (IIFE) intended for consumption from a web-page
- index.html - an index.html test file that can be used to test the IIFE output locally, before packaging on NPM.

For Contributors

Making a Pre-Release

First develop and test the feature using npm run dev
When satisfied using npm run build to build the distribution files.
Use npm run serve-dist to test the built distribution files locally. Or npm run test-dist to combine steps 2 and 3.
When satisfied merge into and checkout the main branch (the default branch).
Assure that git status is clean
Login to npm if needed using npm login
Use npm run release-dev to create a pre-release NPM package, and test it on the GitHub pages.

After making a pre-release package test it by running npm run test-dev. This will open https://vimaec.github.io/vim-webgl-viewer/index-dev.html.

Making a Patch Release

After creating and validating the pre-release, and assuring main is checked out, and the git status is clean, run npm run release-patch.

After making a release package test it by running npm run test-latest. This will open https://vimaec.github.io/vim-webgl-viewer/index.html

Scripts

The following scripts are defined in the package.json, and can each be executed from within VSCode by right-clicking the script name, or from the command line by writing npm run <script-name> where <script-name> is the name of the script.

dev - launch a dev environment using Vite
build - compiles an IIFE JavaScript module and ES module using Vite and the configuration file, placing the output in the dist folder.
bump-dev - increments the pre-release version of the NPM package, with the id dev. This will update the package.json version number with a pre-release tag and number value (e.g. 1.0.0-dev.42). It will also create corresponding tag and commit it to Git.
publish-dev - publishes the current package to NPM with a dev tag, as opposed to the default tag latest.
serve-docs - launches a web-server with the docs folder as the root folder, for testing a published NPM packages (tagged develop or latest) locally
serve-dist: - launches a web-server with the dist folder as the root folder, for testing the built artifacts locally before publishing
gen-docs - Uses mustache to create index.html files
test-latest - Opens the GitHub page with a test file and using the latest release on NPM.
test-dist - Locally serves the dist folder for testing before releasing a package.
release-patch - Increments the patch number and publishes an NPM package using the default tag (@latest). Intended to be called from the main branch only after the pre-release package has been created and tested.
release-dev - Increments the prerelease number and publishes an NPM prerelease package using the @dev tag. Intended to be called from the main branch after the features has been tested and built locally.

Contributing:

Source code is formatted using prettier-eslint using the standardjs format.
On VSCode it is recommended to install ESLint and Prettier ESLint extensions.

The Sources and Dependencies

The distributable file vim-webgl-viewer.iife.js does not contain the underlying source for Three.JS to avoid duplication. Please include Three.JS on your own. However, it comes bundled with:

Dat.GUI
The vim-webgl-viewer.js source file which encapsulates common Three JS boiler plate

Meshes, Nodes and Elements

The viewer is broadly divided into three layer.

Meshes: The scene is rendered using a collection of InstancedMesh, specific object are refered by a (Mesh, instanceIndex) pair.

Nodes: The vim scene is a collection of nodes with a transform and a geometry, each node will result in zero or one object added to Three to be rendered. Nodes are refered by Index.

Elements: objects from the original the bim software containing rich data. Each element can have from 0 to N nodes associated with it. Elements are refered to by Id or Index.

Example:
A table has elementId 12321
it gets exported into 5 nodes, 4 legs and a table top.
the 5 nodes are rendered using 2 meshes, one for the table top, one for all 4 legs.

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Package last updated on 10 Nov 2021

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