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3d pdf (#4412)
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Tim Olson  
#1 Posted : Friday, June 29, 2012 12:19:19 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Is there any interest in the ViaCAD & Shark community for a 3D PDF export?


Tim
Tim Olson
IMSI Design/Encore
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rockyroad_us  
#2 Posted : Friday, June 29, 2012 12:52:33 PM(UTC)
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Actually, I use a program that gives me a 3d in a .pdf to give to my no so CAD- prone clients.

I would be interested if I can render the thing in 3d using FX and convert it to .pdf. I currently just do blank and white or the blue punch color 3d.
FX 7-FXPro14-1650
MacPro 11.7.4
2x2.8GHz Quad Xeon 32GB
NVIDIA 4 K5000 4GB
Work
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lgrijalva  
#3 Posted : Friday, June 29, 2012 3:59:59 PM(UTC)
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I never had used this, to me, I prefer better quality output quality on pdf files, smooth vector curve lines performance often discussed in several threads in this forum. (just as eps vector quality)

For the records, in my experience, this is also affecting windows, not only Macosx, always chunky curves output.
Iused to have very good quality Printing to pdf from vector works with smoothed curves pdf, so: same os, same procedure (print as pdf), different results, never try to do in auto cad (don like this one to much)

some threads about this:
http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=3694
http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=3687
http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=3323
http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=2929
http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=1852


Luis G
Luis G
Industrial Designer
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User since Concepts Unlimited
SharkCad 14
www.miditec.com.mx
www.diferro.com
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ttrw  
#4 Posted : Friday, June 29, 2012 4:36:43 PM(UTC)
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Part of my thesis was based on 3D PDF's. I got a bad mark because I couldn't really find any use in them, as so many viewers were already available on the market- many being free- like eDrawings. I think I was supposed to wax lyrical about how great 3DPDF's were, but here we are again, four years on and people still don't ask for them.

To be honest Tim, I'd really love a high resolution screen render ("as is") instead, saved as a Tiff, so I could put that into a straight pdf document. That would be far more useful, as the current screen export is somewhat pixelated when blown up to A1 without having to render properly.
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zumer  
#5 Posted : Friday, June 29, 2012 6:09:23 PM(UTC)
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Yes. I occasionally model things that my company gets produced in China, and our local person there solicits tooling and production quotes from 3D pdfs and .html docs. Everybody's got access to Acrobat reader and a browser, no matter what CAD they use. I'm using an older Alibre, but Simlab's on my wishlist.
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jlm  
#6 Posted : Friday, June 29, 2012 10:51:33 PM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Tim Olson Go to Quoted Post
Is there any interest in the ViaCAD & Shark community for a 3D PDF export?


Yes, for my customers !
They are marketing people with limited technical skills...
Thanks Tim.
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blowlamp  
#7 Posted : Saturday, June 30, 2012 6:08:30 AM(UTC)
blowlamp

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I would be a nice thing to have, but not essential (for me), given that it's quite easy to do a screencast that would convey similar information.

My vote would go towards getting easier entity placement onto solids and surfaces in ViaCAD/Shark, similar to the Flow feature in other software. Like say text mapped to the surface of a sphere that can then be extruded etc.


Martin.
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posh.de  
#8 Posted : Monday, July 2, 2012 8:56:29 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Tim Olson Go to Quoted Post
...3D PDF export?

if it's done by 'simply' binding a ready-made toolkit of e.g. Spatial this could be interesting.

If reinventing the wheel would be required and with the [URL="http://www.tetra4d.com/products.html"]3D PDF Converter[/URL] f. Acrobat Pro X avail, putting efforts in this feature seems at least not to be pressing.

btw, the ODA does have a [URL="http://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/collada_beta"]Collada toolkit[/URL] ([URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA"]DAE format[/URL]) avail, maybe a nice addition to the 3D mesh export formats.

Norbert
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Steve Kube  
#9 Posted : Monday, August 6, 2012 12:29:30 PM(UTC)
Steve Kube

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Yes, definitely. I am on a 27"iMac and considering options for mobile computing other than my smart phone. I'd go for a Macbook Air or an iPad. I don't intend to do CAD work on the mobile, other than to present to groups or individuals. I am looking into options for viewing 3D CAD on the iPad. I downloaded vueCAD to my iPhone but haven't tried it yet. 3D pdf might be superior?

In conjunction with this move I am looking at Cloud storage of my files so if I'm in the field and forget to load a file, I can access it in the cloud. Of course I would need to save my drawings in a pdf, or other suitable format to do this on an iPad, or use a laptop with a copy of SharkFX on it, but like I said, I don't intend to do CAD work on a mobile device and this is overkill for viewing the work done on my desktop.

I used to have a Macbook Air but it was a real nuisance to keep files in sync between the desktop and the MBA. Apple's iCloud will solve a lot of that problem, except I can't store SharkFX files on iCloud. However, I can store pdfs on iCloud. So, this could be a good answer, as long as I can access and view them on the iPad, or on some other computer 'out there'.

Sidestepping the limitations of iCloud I plan to use DropBox for secure, offsite cloud storage of my SharkFX files. Apparently vueCAD is integrated with DropBox for this purpose so that's good. If a special 3D PDF viewer is needed, I'd want it to run on an iPad.

This is slightly tangent to the topic but just... I once fooled around with remote desktop on my iPhone and from my phone I launched SharkFX on my iMac, opened a file, rotated it, zoomed in, rendered it, and so on. The iPhone is too small to actually use drawing tools and such, but I expect you might be able to do more with an iPad and Remote Desktop. The Retina display should be very nice for presenting models on. It's pretty wild, but if I was in the field and needed to access something on my desktop, and maybe modify it in some way, save it in a different format, email it somewhere... it opens some interesting possibilities.

3D pdf files and viewer for an iPad could be a great asset. It seems like it would help simplify some of the issues I'm dealing with.

Steve
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Tim Olson  
#10 Posted : Monday, August 6, 2012 1:00:20 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Hi Steve

After some more research, I'm now leaning towards exploring 3DXML further. Encore licenses the full Interop Suite from Dassault who have tasked Spatial with supporting 3DXML within Interop. Their 3DXML solution grabs the display data (including PMI product manufacturing data such as dimensions) and shares it through the 3DXML format.

http://www.3ds.com/products/3dvia/3d-xml/overview/

Dassault then provides viewer solutions for mobile and desktop platforms, plus plugins for Word and PowerPoint.


Tim
Tim Olson
IMSI Design/Encore
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misterrogers  
#11 Posted : Tuesday, August 7, 2012 9:08:16 AM(UTC)
misterrogers

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Yes - I work with a lot of "technically challenged" factories across the pacific. 3D pdf capabilities would be very helpful indeed!
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Steve Kube  
#12 Posted : Tuesday, August 7, 2012 10:50:13 AM(UTC)
Steve Kube

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Hi Tim,

Doesn't look like Dassault has their viewer directly available on a Mac. A search on iOS App Store shows two Apps that can read 3DXML, on-hand viewer lite (free), and on-hand viewer ($7.99). The screenshots are not good. There may be others but the search didn't reveal them.

A search for VRML viewers brings up more options that I'll need to explore.

A search for SAT viewer brought up TurboViewer Pro, $29.99 Pretty good reviews, but not all good. The TurboViewer X for $6.99 looks to be DXF and DWG AutoCAD centric.

vueCAD has the best reviews. The free version choked on a decent sized drawing on my iPhone 3GS, (I had plenty of ram available), but it did fine on a small drawing. Perhaps the iPad version works better. The free version is very limited in the file types it will read, I used STL, but I can buy-in to other formats for $99 to $499 each, or you can get them all in the Pro version for $999 (no reviews on the site, no buyers? who needs all of them? I just need one good one that works with Shark FX) It'd be nice to know which format works best in vueCAD with Shark FX. ACIS? IGES? STEP? Each of those are $99 and then the price goes up! How would we know without trying?

I will look at other free CAD viewers for iOS. There's a few out there, but reviews are scanty so far.

Tim, if you could give us, or just recommend an existing way to view Shark FX files in iOS, even if we had to export/save them in another format, that would be most excellent. If it was platform neutral that would be even better. Just make sure it works on iOS on the new iPad since that's the main objective.

A nice feature in Shark FX would be to have an option in preferences to automatically save in multiple formats, native sfx and export in whatever the 'viewer' format was. I'd probably save to DropBox or some other cloud service to be sure they were available when I left the office. Saving both at the same time would help eliminate confusion about which file was most recent and I wouldn't forget to do it.

Steve
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ZeroLengthCurve  
#13 Posted : Wednesday, August 8, 2012 3:05:47 AM(UTC)
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Tim,

This SEEMS awesome. It made me wonder whether xml of this type could be backported to older legacy apps via someinterface:-)

It almost gives me hope that ViaCAD Pro, Freeship, PolyCAD, and other apps could maniupate each others data or contol points in whatever interface the user was in at the moment.

Such a capability might alleviate excessive import, export, and throwaway sessions.

I am probably dreaming, though...
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zumer  
#14 Posted : Wednesday, August 8, 2012 7:26:00 AM(UTC)
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Acrobat reader is ubiquitous for Windows PCs, and that gives 3D viewing even to non-CAD types. ViaCAD publishes to Viewpoint media, .mtx or Metastream if memory serves, but I haven't been able to get Metastream viewer up and running for a couple of years, maybe a Win 7 thing(?), so its effectively redundant. I thought it was pretty good when I used it six or seven years ago. For my own purposes, I've a couple of Windows tablets, shown here next to my wife's iPad. One's an MSI Windpad 110, 1280 x 800 IPS 10, AMD Zacate CPU, only 1GHz dual core, but 8Gb RAM. Not very fast, but works effectively with Shark for 3-4 hours, and mini HDMI for showing to customers on their monitors or TVs. The other's an 8" 1024 x 768 non-IPS with Atom N2600, faster than the MSI but 2.5-3 hours of battery. Two USBs, mini HDMI, 64Gb SSD, 64 Gb microSD and bluetooth make it a take-anywhere CAD tab, though, and although I've got Turboviewer on a 7" Android tablet, it doesn't get used anymore. Right now, you can do almost as much on a Windows tab as you can on a desk- or laptop, and that makes it more useful to me. But, Win Ultimate retail cost one-and-a-half times as much as the 8" tablet it's installed on, which is crazy.
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