Cadalyst - October 2008 - (Page 19)

cadalystlabsreview ably sophisticated. Users today have more choices than ever to make their design data work for them in ways that go well beyond the original intent. Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended Adobe earlier this year introduced the Acrobat 9 family of electronic publishing applications, including Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, formerly called Acrobat 3D. With Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, Adobe has moved further into 3D publishing and has added a wealth of features that go well beyond what we can cover in this roundup. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended has actually become a small family of products that includes the central Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, Adobe Presenter, Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES, and Adobe 3D Reviewer software. The PDF-format documents you create using Acrobat can include audio, video, images, 3D visualizations, and geospatially aware maps that can be accessed from virtually any computer platform today. Using Adobe Presenter, you can create digital slide presentations from Microsoft PowerPoint files that include video, voice-overs, demonstrations, and other interactive elements. Adobe delves deeper into 3D with this release, and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended supports major CAD applications and formats, including SolidWorks, CATIA V4 and V5, Siemens NX, Siemens I-deas, Pro/ENGINEER, AutoCAD, and Autodesk Inventor. Use the link in the Cadalyst online table that accompanies this feature to view a complete list of supported formats. Using Acrobat 9 Pro Extended to prepare PDF files of 3D designs — which you can mark up, add comments, and save 3D views — you can interact with the designs in 3D by rotating, zooming, measuring, and creating crosssections. File initiators and recipients can even mark up video files that are part of PDF files. Import virtually any CAD file and export it to neutral formats such as STEP, IGES, or STL for use in downstream manufacturing proAdobe Systems 800.833.6687 www.adobe.com/products/ acrobatproextended Price: $699 Testing My first task in preparing for this review was to select design files from major 3D CAD applications to use in evaluating the conversion capabilities of the 3D publishing products in this review. This is never as simple as it might seem. To avoid file-conversion problems during testing, I would need to use file versions that were not so new and not so old that they wouldn’t be supported by every product in the review. The chosen files would need to be relatively complex but not so much so that they would tax the capabilities of even the most powerful workstations. Adding to the file-selection challenge was the fact that some of the 3D publishing applications rely on libraries from the originating 3D CAD application, thus requiring that the CAD application be installed on the test workstation. In the end, I made what I thought would be safe choices, electing to use a suite of drawings that included the SeaScooter assembly created in SolidWorks 2005 and two older AutoCAD drawings, ENGINE.DWG and WILHOME. DWG, which I’ve used previously in testing 3D publishing applications. Alas, I ran into some problems. 3DVIA, for example, requires SolidWorks to be installed on the test system and doesn’t support the AutoCAD DWG file format, so I wasn’t able to run any tests on that product. Other applications had problems converting the files or simply didn’t support the particular file versions I used for testing. In a couple of instances, noted in the online feature table, I substituted a drawing that I hadn’t originally planned to use. As noted in the past, Autodesk no longer makes the specifications for its DWG drawing file format available to third-party vendors, so conversion problems with entities found in newer versions of AutoCAD are becoming more prevalent. This incompatibility ultimately makes the repurposing of AutoCAD design data more difficult unless, of course, all your software is from Autodesk. This survey article presents an overview of the capabilities, benefits, and drawbacks of the featured products. Because these products cover a broad range of applications, approaches, and intents, it is not practical to compare them head-to-head or present our standard report card– style evaluations. The best way to determine the most suitable solution for your needs is to narrow the list based on the information presented here and in the accompanying online feature table (www.cadalyst.com/1008-3D-table), then download the available trial versions to evaluate each solution using the types of 3D design files you expect to publish. Keep in mind that the figures I present in the online feature table should be considered broad indicators of a each product’s capabilities. As they say, your mileage may — and probably will — vary. The applications in this roundup cover a wide range of costs, features, and flexibility, which means that there’s a worthwhile solution for nearly every user or organization. October 2008 cadalyst www.cadalyst.com Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended lets you output drawings that comply with the recently ratified PDF/E standard (ISO 245171:2008). This image is a conversion from a SolidWorks model. 19 http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatproextended http://www.cadalyst.com/1008-3D-table http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - October 2008

Cadalyst - October 2008 Contents Editor’s Window Cad Central SimCity for Real Designs Spring to Life — 3D Publishing Tools Make File Sharing as Easy as Opening a Book Xi MTower 2P64X — Dual Quad-Core Workstation ArchiCAD 12 — BIM Software Dell Precision M6300 — High-End Mobile Workstation Cad Manager Mcad Modeling Aec Insight Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry

Cadalyst - October 2008

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