Cadalyst - November 2007 - (Page 26)

cadlabsreview Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition Right Hemisphere 510.818.2880 www.righthemisphere.com Price: $1,995 Right Hemisphere develops products designed to facilitate enterprise product communication and collaboration. Among these are two versions of Deep Exploration 5 — Standard Edition and CAD Edition. Deep Exploration 5 is a standalone application that allows users to transform, author, and manage 2D, 3D, animation, video, and audio files. For this roundup review, I evaluated the newly released version of the Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition, which features excellent support for a remarkably wide range of CAD file formats. Among the CAD formats supported by Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition are CATIA v4 and v5, Unigraphics, Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, JT, SDRC I-deas, IGES, MicroStation, CADkey, AutoCAD, Solid Edge, STEP, and VDA. You can download a complete list of the supported file formats from the company Web site. In addition to CAD-specific file-format support, Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition supports 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave 3D, SOFTIMAGE|XSI, Acrobat, and Right Hemisphere’s Deep Exploration 5 is a standalone application to transform, author, and manage 2D, 3D, animation, video, and audio files. Adobe Photoshop, with other file formats supported via Right Hemisphere’s SDK. All told, Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition can import from more than 110 formats and export to almost 50. Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition is extensible via a plug-in architecture, and readers may remember the PDF Publishing Module — which is now incorporated directly into the product — and the JT/PMI Module — which is available as a separate add-on. These two plug-ins were available for Adobe Acrobat 3D as well, but when Adobe moved from v7 to v8, the plug-ins no longer worked. Right Hemisphere plans to update both plug-ins to work with the latest version of Adobe Acrobat 3D. Mimicking Windows Explorer, Deep Exploration 5 has a familiar and easy-to-use interface. Applications can be launched from Deep Exploration 5, which also provides the ability to view files in both ZIP and RAR formats without having to unpack them first. Users can merge multiple 3D files for easy viewing as well. Both Deep Exploration 5 and Right Hemisphere’s free Deep Publish product provide numerous kinds of markup and measurement tools for callouts and dimensioning. New to this release is the ability to automatically create and edit thrust lines within 3D scenes and animate lines when parts are moved. Deep Exploration 5 can publish 3D content for Web-based presentations and create and edit keyframe animation of 3D models for presentations. Both grouping and hierarchy tools are provided for managing complex models, and clipping planes are supported for creating cross sections to better understand or illustrate the 3D models. With Deep Exploration 5, users can translate and author one model at a time. But for enterprise-level volume, Right Hemisphere’s Deep Server can automate these capabilities. The Deep View product is a free viewer that supports the RH file format and functions as an ActiveX viewer inside Internet Explorer. Deep View is available as a 4 MB download from the company’s Web site. Right Hemisphere’s Deep Exploration 5 CAD Edition converted our test files without any difficulties, producing a 1.35 MB RH file from the SolidWorks SeaScooter assembly in less than 45 seconds and a 135 KB RH file from the AutoCAD engine drawing in less than 30 seconds. The conversions had no visible flaws. Right Hemisphere regularly updates its converters to add new features and provides support for additional file formats. eDrawings 2007 Professional SolidWorks 800.693.9000 www.solidworks.com Price: $495 SolidWorks eDrawings software is a design-communication tool for sharing accurate representations of both 2D drawings and 3D models. Depending upon which version of SolidWorks you choose, a version of eDrawings is included. The standard edition of SolidWorks includes the basic free eDrawings publisher, and the more advanced editions of SolidWorks — SolidWorks Office Professional, for example — have the more-capable eDrawings Professional, which I evaluated for this roundup review. eDrawings files are highly compressed, which makes transmitting design data easy and fast. eDrawings provides intelligent interpretation tools such as 3D Pointer, Virtual Folding, and Animated Drawing Views, 26 November 2007 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://www.righthemisphere.com http://www.solidworks.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - November 2007

Cadalyst - November 2007 Contents Editor's window Cad Central Conceptual Inspiration for Less Than $200 From Any Angle - Publish and Share Your 3D Designs NX 5, Part 1 - CAD/CAM/CAE Software Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition - Software for Project Information Management CAD Manager's Survey 2007 Sharing and Collaborating with Your Team To BIMfinity and Beyond! Solutions for Sending Large Digital Files Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Cad Fidential

Cadalyst - November 2007

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