BIMsurfer Versions

A brief history of BIMsurfer.

• [2009] We started a viewer based on O3D.
• [?] BIMsurfer V1 was released, based on SceneJS, BIMsurfer was an application back then
• [?] Version 1 was modified in order for it work as a component
• [?] BIMsurfer V2 was released, the emphasis was now on it having an API. Built on XeoGL.
• [2018] Work started on BIMsurfer 3, this time built on WebGL2 without relying on a JS library for WebGL
• [2019] First release (hopefully)

Which version to choose?

We'll just list the pros and cons, so you can decide for yourself.

BIMsurfer V1 (https://github.com/opensourceBIM/BIMsurfer/tree/V1)

This is also the version used in BIMvie.ws at the moment.

Pros:

• Based on SceneJS, which has a SceneGraph which makes it easy and fast to for example change the visualization of things.
• A bit like the previous point, it is also easy to hide/show objects
• Performance is OK as long as you don't try to load very big models

Cons:

• It's the oldest version, and not maintained anymore
• Really big models cannot be loaded
• It basically has no (documented) API

BIMsurfer V2 (https://github.com/opensourceBIM/BIMsurfer/tree/master)

Pros:

• It has an API, which is also documented
• It is based on XeoGL, which is based on WebGL1, which makes it work on most tablets/phones as well
• It can (in theory) load data from sources other than BIMserver

Cons:

• It is the slowest version of BIMsurfer
• It uses a lot of (CPU) memory
• It is less dynamic than BIMsurfer V1 since there is no scenegraph

BIMsurfer 3

Pros:

• It is the fastest viewer, both in loading and in rendering
• It uses very little CPU memory
• It is capable of loading really big models
• A lot of emphasis has been put on being able to load any model(set)

Cons:

• Since it is based on WebGL2, it currently (2019) does not work on most phones/tablets
• It is the least dynamic implementation. You are basically limited to simply loading complete models from a BIMserver.