About VIM and the VIM Desktop Application SDK
The VIM Desktop Application SDK (https://github.com/vimaec/vim-desktop-sdk) is a C# API for writing plug-ins that can automate the VIM Windows Desktop application and add new functionality.
VIM (Virtual Information Modeling) is both a platform and open file-format designed especially for the efficient interchange of BIM and 3D data into virtual environments and real-time engines running on multiple platform
The VIM Desktop Application is a WPF .NET application with an integrated high-performance rendering engine built from the ground up using the state of the art Vulkan API and is designed especially for large scale architectural projects.
The following are required to get started building an SDK:
- Visual Studio Community 2019 – download for free at https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
- VIM Desktop Application – register for a free account at https://portal.vimaec.com
A VIM plug-in is any class that has the [VimPlugin] attribute and implements the IVimPlugin interface from the Vim.Desktop.Api.dll assembly. VIM plug-ins are loaded from .NET assemblies whose name matches the pattern *.Plugin.dll and that resides in the %userprofile%\VIM\Desktop Plugins folder. On assembly (class library) may contain multiple plug-ins.
The VIM API SDK consists of most file in the VIM Desktop Application folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\VIMaec LLC\VIM\Viewer) that match the pattern Vim.*.dll. These are all managed libraries (aka .NET Assemblies), meaning that they are .NET Class Libraries, amd cam be used with various .NET languages.
Here is the full list:
- Vim.BFast.dll
- Vim.Buffers.dll
- Vim.DotNetUtilities.dll
- Vim.G3d.dll
- Vim.Geometry.dll
- Vim.LinqArray.dll
- Vim.Math3d.dll
- For internal use only: Vim.Collaboration.Client.dll
- For internal use only: Vim.Collaboration.Core.dll
The VIM Desktop application communicates with the plug-in by calling functions exposed by the plug-in by implementing the IVimPlugin interface. These are:
void Init(IVimApi api)– Called when the plug-in is initializedvoid OnOpenFile(string fileName)– Called when a new VIM file is loadedvoid OnCloseFile()– Called when a VIM file is unloadedvoid OnFrameUpdate(float deltaTime)– Called on each frame
The IVimApi is an interface provided upon initialization to the plug-in that provides a way for the plug-in to communicate with and control the Desktop application further.
For more information on the API see the file DesktopApi.cs.