Common Information Model (CIM) visualization and tools.
CIMSpace allows you to read, display, analyze and edit CIM files, which are a data interchange format based on IEC standards 61968 & 61970. See CIM users group for additional details on the CIM format.
The program is available online https://derrickoswald.github.io/CIMSpace/.
An overview of the current release:
View a CIM file from local disk storage
- click Load menu item in the upper nav bar
- Browse or Drag n' Drop to select CIM file (.rdf, .xml or .zip extension)
note: large files may take significant time to load, files larger than 1 GB may exceed available browser RAM
View a CIM file from the internet
- click Load menu item in the upper nav bar
- enter the URL in the text box, e.g. https://9code.ch/data/sample.zip, or choose one of the presets from the drop down menu.
- click the Load button
note: the specified server must have Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) enabled
- Zoom mouse wheel or click + or - in upper right hand corner or shift-left-click and hold, drag window, release
- Pan left-click and hold, drag, release
- Rotate control-left-click and hold, drag left or right, release, reset North to vertical by clicking compass icon in upper right hand corner
- 3D control-left-click and hold, drag up or down, release
The controls toolbox in the upper right hand corner has the following features:
to zoom the map view to include all CIM elements
to hide or show an info box containing the attributes of user selected, searched or traced elements
to hide or show the theme chooser
to hide or show the legend for the current theme
to hide or show the editor
to hide or show the connectivity editor
to hide or show the diagram viewer (experimental)
The Options drop down in the upper nav bar has the following features:
- toggle Internals to hide or show station/distribution-box internals
- toggle 3D buildings to enable or disable building depth in 3D
- toggle Scale bar to hide or show a scale bar in the lower left hand corner
- toggle Coordinates to hide or show cursor longitude,latitude (x,y) in the lower left hand corner
- toggle Streetview to add a Google Streetview link at the top of the Info box when possible
- toggle the Info box on
- click on an element, e.g. ACLineSegment or Switch
- click through links in attribute display
- to deselect, click in a blank area of the map
Selecting an element loads it into the edit box, along with its child elements (those that solely reference the parent selected element). The elements are shown as links. Attributes can be edited by expanding the link and entering new information in the provided edit boxes. Buttons at the bottom allow:
- Save persists the edited CIM elements (only in memory - see Save below)
- Delete the selected elements (this is a "cascade delete" where all loaded elements are deleted)
- Cancel discards edits
- Create new creates a copy (with a new mRID) of the main element and begins the process of editing it
For some classes of CIM elements there are Makers, which programatically assist you in creating some of the more complex CIM elements. When no element is currently being edited, there are two selection drop-downs:
- choose from the Maker drop-down to select the type of CIM element
- fill in the Maker specific form
- click the Create button
- follow the on-screen prompts to complete the procedure
- edit the attributes of the created elements as appropriate
- click Save or Cancel to keep or discard the new elements
For other classes of CIM elements for which no Maker exists:
- choose from the Class drop-down to select the class of CIM element
- click the Create button
- edit the attributes of the created element as appropriate
- click Save or Cancel to keep or discard the new element
To persist the in-memory CIM elements to disk, click the Save menu item in the upper nav bar. Fields for File name and internal "rdf:about" and "description" attributes are provided.
note: after editing these fields, you will need to click outside the field before clicking Save, otherwise you will get a "not ready yet message"
Three options for saving are provided:
- Full model saves the full CIM file with elements as they are currently in memory
- Difference model saves a CIM difference model file with new, changed and deleted elements only
- Only new elements as full model saves new elements as if the CIM file were empty before these were added
The file is downloaded as a .zip file with the CIM file enclosed. Save the file to your persistent storage.
- enter mRID, name or aliasName in the search box in upper nav bar, press Enter or click magnifying glass icon
- if the element has a geographic location, the map is centered on it and it is highlighted
- otherwise it will only be shown in the Info, Edit or Connectivity boxes if they are visible
- select the start element, click Trace in the Trace drop down in the upper nav bar
- options for tracing in the Trace drop down in upper nav bar:
- toggle Trace through open switches to ignore/honor normalOpen attribute of Switch derived objects for trace stopping conditions
- toggle Trace through voltage levels to ignore/honor transformer voltage changes for trace stopping conditions
- enter a number in the # elements field to limit the maximum number of elements to trace
- click Un-Highlight to restore the map
CIMSpace uses Mapbox GL and requires WebGL to be enabled in your browser. All current browsers have WebGL support, but WebGL support is dependent on GPU support and may not be available on older devices/browsers, due to a lack of up-to-date video drivers.
You can test if your browser supports WebGL by navigating to https://get.webgl.org/ to see if a spinning cube is displayed. If not, for some older browser versions, WebGL can be enabled as follows:
FireFox
Alter the browser default settings in the configuration
- Browse page about:config
- Set webgl.force-enabled to true
Chrome
Modify the startup command to include the parameter: --ignore-gpu-blacklist
- Find and right click on the Chrome shortcut you use (normally on the desktop or in the start menu) .
- Select 'Properties' or 'Eigenschaften'
- Add the '--ignore-gpu-blacklist' flag without the quotes at the end of the 'Target' or 'Zeil' box:
- For me the command is thus: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --ignore-gpu-blacklist