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VIM for Developers

VIM offers a suite of tools and libraries that empower software developers to implement custom 3D visualizations, workflows, tools, and automations based on their BIM models.

In addition to the libraries and command line applications below, VIM provides software development partnership opportunities, allowing technical customers access to our closed source code, including our high-performance Vulkan renderer. Such a partnership also provides guest access to our Slack messaging system for direct, day-to-day communication as well as consulting hours.

VIM Open-Source Libraries​

To get started, VIM provides the following free open-source libraries:

  • VIM Web — The VIM Web viewer runs in your web browser. It loads and visualizes VIM files from a URL (URLs can be self-hosted). This viewer is fully customizable and comes with built-in camera controls, isolation, object coloring, a sectioning tool, a measure tool, and widgets for navigating the element hierarchy and for inspecting BIM element properties.

  • VIM File Format — The VIM file format is maintained in a free and open-source GitHub repository. This repository contains technical documentation about the VIM file format as well as libraries to read and write VIM files.

Licensed VIM SDK and Command Line Tools​

VIM additionally provides a collection of licensed libraries and command line applications. These are all unlocked using an offline license key.

  • VIM SDK — The VIM SDK enables you to implement your own Revit add-in which invokes the underlying VIM exporter to convert your Revit projects into VIM files. It also provides access to libraries for diffing and running clash detections with VIM files.

  • VIM Tool CLI — The VIM Tool is a command line application that enables you to automate a number of tasks involving VIM files, including:

    • Transferring VIM file information into a SQL Server database.
    • Comparing (or diffing) two VIM files and storing the difference in an SQL Server
      database.
    • Merging a collection of VIM files into a single VIM file for custom federation purposes.
    • Deduplicating similar meshes in a VIM file.

  • VIM IFC Converter CLI — The VIM IFC Converter is a command line application that enables you to automate the conversion of IFC files into VIM files.