What is the “DocumentHistory” element?

This element includes details about the people and/or programs that created and/or modified the gbXML file. This is important for conveying to the receiving software tool which software tool produced the gbXML file. The receiving software may act differently depending upon which tool that produced the gbXML file. For example, the gbXML validation software tool needs to know which vendor produced the gbXML file so that it can act accordingly. In some cases a building energy modeling tool like OpenStudio cannot change the way it exports certain geometries that fail one or more gbXML test cases. If the validation tool knows that OpenStudio created the gbXML file, then it will “cut the tool some slack” for the specific test cases.

The DocumentHistory element includes the following child elements:

CreatedBy: Denotes the time this file has been created, as well as the person and program used to create this file. This element includes a number of attributes.
ProgramInfo: Contains information about programs that created and modified this file. This element includes a number of attributes and child elements.
PersonInfo: Contains information about people that created and modified this file. This element includes a number of child elements including demographic information.
ModifiedBy: Denotes the time this file has been modified, as well as the person and program used to modify this file. This element includes a number of attributes.