VMAP Standard Specifications
VMAP is a vendor-neutral standard for CAE data storage to enhance interoperability in virtual engineering workflows.
Major features of VMAP are:
The VMAP Standard Specifications aim to provide best-practice guidelines for the community. These specifications form the core of the standard. Since, VMAP is driven by industry and software vendors, the main focus of VMAP has been to align the CAE data in a form which is generic and at the same time encompasses all aspects of it. The VMAP group has aligned the data into groups and found commonalities among many softwares to build the standard. Keeping this in mind, the VMAP storage structure defines the four main groups which form the essence of any simulation – GEOMETRY, VARIABLES, SYSTEM and MATERIAL. Within these four main groups, the CAE data is sorted into datasets and attributes.
The VMAP standard is based on HDF5 a widely accepted implementation platform for many IO related applications. The freely available SWIG wrapper tool can be utilized to bind the VMAP IO software library into software written in any other programming or script language, see . As such the VMAP IO library is universally available. Many ISVs, both large and small players, have already implemented the VMAP Standard directly within their software to extract the maximum speed and efficiency
VMAP provides a library of IO routines to help engineers speed-up the creation of their workflows thereby removing the emphasis for considering data formats. It enables easier and more flexible data transfer, use of different software for different simulations and the creation of reusable processes that can be easily adapted to include more or different data. It enables software interoperability for pre- & post-processing and data manipulation.
General Information
V1.0 December 17, 2020
This document provides a short overview of the VMAP Standard, along with the state of the art and the use cases.
Standard Specifications
V1.2 August 29, 2024
This document provides a detailed description of the VMAP Standard Specifications for simulation and sensor data.