Autodesk Forge Viewer loading heavy models VS BIM360 Viewer

Question

We have a large .nwd model (1.6GB) that we are uploading directly to forge. I have hidden some elements in the viewer so only some of the elements are translated in the view to make it lighter. I am still having issues with SVF and SVF2 times to fully load the models on Forge. However I did a test on uploading to our hub on BIM360 and noticed it was significantly faster to upload and also the viewer renders the model a lot faster.

My question: Is it better to directly upload to the OSS on Forge or are there benefits in terms of load and rendering times to take the files directly from BIM360 via the Plugin integration workflow? Note: I am only considering upload and rendering times in this question and not other factors that could be beneficial to the end user.

Answer 1

BIM360 is built on top of Forge and it uses the exact same stack to store, translate, and preview your designs, so there should be almost no difference in loading and performance.

If you do see a significant difference in rendering performance, try the following:

• open the model in your custom Forge Viewer app, and run the following command in the browser console:

NOP_VIEWER.model.isSVF2()

This should tell you whether your model really uses the SVF2 format.

• open the model in another sample app, for example, https://github.com/petrbroz/forge-simple-viewer-nodejs (there's a branch called test/svf2 that is configured to load your models in SVF2), and see if the performance is the same

This should rule out any potential issues in your app's own code that could be affecting the performance.