Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI
Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI

VMAP CAE Interface Standard

Services and Solutions Supporting the Standard

The lack of standards in virtual engineering workflows and incompatible interfaces for the transfer of virtual data not only cause additional costs and complex manual adaptation but also lead to inflexible IT solutions, loss of information and significant delays in the overall design process. The standardization of data interfaces in CAE is, therefore, vital for all industry segments where simulation processes are central to the product and process design.

In December 2022 sixteen founding members – partially coming from the initial ITEA project – established the VMAP Standards Community (VMAP SC) to be registered as a not-for-profit association. VMAP SC will be open to all, who intend to contribute to the VMAP Standard and its extension, thereof. The VMAP SC makes the software parts of the standard available to the general public as open source software free of charge. Especially, companies in the manufacturing industry, software companies and research institutes can profit from the use of the software.

Through the technical maintenance of the standard and the supervision of its further development, the VMAP association will offer the possibility to make the developed standard accessible to a broad interested public, to explain its application and to further develop the technology according to the requirements of the users. This will make the standard accessible to a wide audience and the VMAP SC will thus ensure equal opportunities for all potential users.

More details about VMAP SC

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Contributions to the VMAP Standards Community

Primarily, Fraunhofer SCAI coordinates standardization activities and performs further maintenance of the related VMAP IO Library software.

  • VMAP Library: During the initial ITEA VMAP project, SCAI coordinated the software development of the reference VMAP IO Library. We continue this further and alongside work on the integration of extensions and improvements suggested by the VMAP SC members. In addition, we will focus on compliance checks with respect to the recent VMAP specifications. All the updates will be made available regularly, initially to the VMAP SC members through the internal database, followed by a public version release after approval by the VMAP SC.
  • VMAP Documents: Alike the VMAP IO Library, SCAI coordinates the activities around standard specifications and documentation. SCAI provides a server for joint documentation development and manages updates after release approval by the VMAP SC.
  • VMAP Web-Representation: SCAI is host for the VMAP web-domain and content management system. SCAI’s PR department supports setup, design and layout of web-pages and other marketing materials.
  • Aligning VMAP to other Standards: Within various planned and running R&D projects, SCAI is involved in evaluation of related engineering standards – and how VMAP can be linked to these standards in a unique way.

VMAP Software Solutions

SCAI’s mission is to adapt advanced algorithms and widely used standards and implement them in software solutions for the industry:

  • Visualiser: SCAI is working on a VMAP extension for the open-source CAE data viewer ParaView. ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform data analysis and visualization application. ParaView users can quickly build visualizations to analyze their data using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The data exploration can be done interactively in 3D or programmatically using ParaView’s batch processing capabilities. ParaView-VMAP extensions will be made available on a cost-free and open-source basis to the VMAP community. Planned release is in spring 2022.
  • MpCCI Mapper: Since many years, SCAI offers a dedicated tool for data and simulation result transfer in CAE workflows. The MpCCI Mapper already supports a wide range of native file formats – and the most recent version of the VMAP standard. MpCCI Mapper allows to check the geometric compliance of two models by calculating the local distances between them. The (automatic) mesh alignment helps to adjust the positions of two models if they are not in a non-conformal coordinate system. A robust mapping algorithm enables the transfer of various physical quantities (with nodal-, element- or shell-layer based locations) for all standard shell element and mesh types. The mapping works for different integration types as well as for different number of integration points in thickness direction for source and target model. Being able to store the mapped results in the VMAP format will allow the users to view these results directly using the HDF5 viewer or import them more flexibly in any format in addition to the one intended for mapping.