The HOOPS Stream File (HSF) format is an open, customizable, highly compressed 2D/3D visualization format specifically tailored to the needs of displaying engineering data. Through the OpenHSF Initiative, the HSF Specification has been openly published and a free read/write SDK made available. In addition, the OpenHSF Membership Council has been formed to propose and ratify extensions to the format specification.

Advantages

Using HSF, application developers can create highly customized, stream-capable visualization files containing tessellated geometry as well as application-specific information (such as assembly structure, analysis data, topological data, object behaviors, etc.) and have that data intelligently associated with the tessellated model.

HSF has evolved from the needs of hundreds of CAD/CAM/CAE software vendors over a period of more than 12 years as they sought to address the graphics needs of their end users. As a result, HSF is specifically tailored toward the needs of the engineering community and has been designed by a dedicated team of graphics technologists.

Some of the advantages of HSF include:

True Openness: The specification is published and SDK is free, making HSF attractive for end users who wish to leverage standards and avoid lock-in. This free approach also keeps the costs of software development (and thus licensing fees) down.

Free SDK: Source code to the HSF read/write toolkits is available to ease the reading/writing of the format and to provide additional compression, including free versions which may be licensed and downloaded from this site.

Streaming: HSF is stream-capable with support for storing levels-of-detail, initial camera position, file dictionary, etc and is highly compressed and stream-ready when published. This ability to stream is critical to realize the benefits of networks and efficient transfer and visualization of the largest assemblies.

Engineering Specific: The engineering specific capabilities of the format make HSF ideal for presenting engineering models.

Customizable: HSF gives developers the ability to easily embed application-specific XML or User Data directly within the file with full asssociativity with the graphical model.

IP Protection: As a tessellated format, valuable IP will not be compromised by the ability to reverse engineer from precise math data. In addition, the original design is protected from change or corruption since tessellated forms can not be operated on by a solid or surface modeling application.

Extensible: Software vendors can create custom formats with higher level capabilities through either Proprietary Extensions or by participating in the OpenHSF Extension Process.

Ubiquity: There exists a range of support from the several major CAD vendors, end-users and analysts, helping ensure that the format becomes ubiquitous.

Multi-Platform Support: In addition to free source code, supported versions of the HSF SDK are available on Windows (including WindowsCE), UNIX, Linux and MAC OS X.

Free Viewers: Several free OpenHSF viewers are available from this site and from several OpenHSF members.

Complementary Tools: Additional HSF-compatible component technologies are available from multiple sources to help developers build sophisticated applications using HSF as their core format.