NOVEDGE blog

ZBrush is Talking; modo, Maya, and CINEMA 4D are Listening!

DCC companies do their best to ensure that 3D models can easily and smoothly be transferred to/from their competitors' systems

Coming from a mechanical CAD background I'm always pleasantly surprised by the open approach in data-exchange of 3D graphics software, more specifically known as DCC (Digital Content Creation). While CAD companies try every trick in the book to make transferring geometric data from one CAD system to the other as difficult and painful as possible, many DCC companies do exactly the opposite: they do their best to ensure that your 3D models, renderings, and animations can easily and smoothly be transferred to and from their competitors' systems.

CAD companies try every trick in the book to make transferring geometric data as difficult and painful as possible

The main reason for this open attitude comes from the typical production process: most of the projects in this field require the use of several software tools and it would be unacceptable not to be able to transfer data back and forth. A second reason is the relative simplicity of DCC data when compared to CAD data. CAD projects represent products someone has to build, therefore they must be extremely precise, and able to host a lot of non-geometric information. On the other hand, many 3D graphics projects have as final goal the creation of a movie or a set of images. Precision has to be good enough to support the required quality for the final video or image, but not more.

Pixologic and Luxology today announced the release of GoZ for modo

A good example of the open attitude of the 3D world can be observed in ZBrush products. Pixologic and Luxology today announced the release of GoZ for modo, a free plug-in for ZBrush that automatically transfers mesh geometry and normal, displacement, and texture maps into modo and back again.

Gamasutra explains the power of the new ZBrush plugins with this example: "With GoZ, modo can be used to create a base model, such as a human head, to provide the basic anatomy. This model can then be instantly transferred to ZBrush via GoZ for brush-based addition of scars, warts and wrinkles. The enhanced model can then be passed back to modo to create the final rendered output files."

This is just the latest in a very interesting series of "connectors," including GoZ for Maya, and GoZ for CINEMA 4D. According to the Pixologic website more connectors are expected to be released soon, which will make life even easier for ZBrush users.

Personally I love to see the artificial barriers between software systems fall. I believe that the entire 3D market will benefit from this open approach and I can't even imagine how much better life would be for CAD users if CAD companies were willing to follow the example of Pixologic.

Franco Folini

Pixologic Videos
[Watch in Full Resolution]
 

[Watch in Full Resolution] Pixologic products are available from Novedge

Vectorworks 2009 Viewer Makes Architects' Life Easier!

in order to view and print a Vectorworks file you don't need a Vectorworks license

People at Nemetschek, the makers of Vectorworks, have a little secret I would like to reveal to you: in order to view a Vectorworks model or drawing you neither need to own a Vectorworks license, nor to convert your files into some data exchange format. You only need to download a copy of the free Vectorworks 2009 Viewer, and have it installed on your or your clients' computers.

you can easily set up a collaboration process without having to worry about budget constraints

The Vectorworks 2009 Viewer can open any file (.mcd and .vwx) created with several versions of your favorite CAD system including 9, 10, 11, 12, 2008, and obviously the latest 2009 (with all the enhancements of the Service Pack 4). Using this free tool you can easily set up a collaboration process with your clients without having to worry about budget constraints or loss of information due to data conversion. Simply send them your Vectorworks files with a link to the Vectorworks 2009 Viewer download to let them open, explore, and print your 3D models and 2D drawings.

Now that you know this little secret you can go on the Novedge website and download a copy of the Vectorworks 2009 Viewer for your PC or Mac. And the the best part is you are not bound to keep this secret. Tell all your colleagues about it!

Franco Folini

An Interview with Mary Hope McQuiston, Head of Autodesk Extended Design Group

Mary Hope McQuiston is the head of the Extended Design Group of Autodesk, the group in charge of all DWF products including Design Review, Freewheel, and the DWF Toolkit.
The CAD visualization market is currently at the center of a battle for the establishment of a standard file format for collaboration and visualization of CAD data. The two major contenders are Adobe PDF 3D (Portable Document Format) and Autodesk DWF (Design Web Format). Adobe is trying to attract users leveraging its brand name and the popularity of the PDF file format, while Autodesk is betting on the huge installed base of its products and giving away viewers and SDK for free. Having recently interviewed Doug Halliday of Adobe I thought it would be interesting to have an opinion from the other side of the trench, the Autodesk side. I asked Mary Hope for an interview and she accepted.

Mary Hope, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your professional activities?

our products enable non-CAD users to better collaborate with the architects, designers and engineers

I oversee the extended design business here at Autodesk, which day to day involves driving product management, marketing and business development. The group develops solutions and underlying technology to simplify collaboration between core Autodesk design users and their extended project teams. Essentially our products enable non-CAD users to better collaborate with the architects, designers and engineers using Autodesk’s design applications. In addition, we focus on helping non-CAD users access and re-use the 2D and model-based or 3D graphic information originally authored in the CAD applications in their “downstream” systems and applications.
Our product portfolio includes Autodesk Design Review, Autodesk Freewheel and the DWF Toolkit. These products also double as components of Autodesk’s collaborative platform and are utilized in Autodesk customer workflow solutions like FM Desktop, Productstream, Buzzsaw, Vault and Impression and in hundreds of third party solutions as well.
As far as me personally I’ve been with Autodesk a combined eight years, from 1994-1999 and again since November 2004. Prior to Autodesk I ran the health sciences division of a CD-ROM publishing company and in between stints at Autodesk spent five years in executive roles at Verticalnet, a builder and operator of 56 vertical marketplaces, and at Neoforma, a developer of ASP based supply chain management software for hospitals.

DWF and PDF are each competing to establish itself as the reference file format for data visualization and collaboration. How would you describe the differences between the two?

"with a PDF or GIF it’s like you’re getting a brochure of the design. DWF, on the other hand, is the design" (DWF user)

One customer I just spoke with sums it up pretty well, he told me - “With a PDF or GIF it’s like you’re getting a brochure of the design. DWF, on the other hand, is the design.”
Autodesk DWF technology and Adobe PDF have similarities: Both are built around self-contained files that support multiple pages, printing, and password protection. The biggest difference is that DWFs have always been intended for handling CAD data and project/product workflows. The entire concept of the DWF file was created and developed solely with CAD data and users in mind – hence a DWF is the model. PDFs, on the other hand, were first designed for use as a conduit for text and graphics, and they are just now entering the CAD space.

The full sharing of CAD data outside the design department has been the goal of the developers of CAD viewers and collaboration tools for many years. Despite all the effort and investments, this goal has yet to be reached. What are the major obstacles in your opinion?

I believe lack of applications beyond basic viewing and printing has prevented full adoption of digital workflows

Status quo, or inertia, is a big barrier. We believe making it as easy as possible to share design data—and integrating design-sharing capabilities directly into our design software—is helping. This is why we built DWF publishing into every Autodesk application and why we make it easy to capture data from non-Autodesk applications via our free DWF writer and plug-ins.
Incomplete data has been another obstacle. Historically the data shared outside the CAD department has been limited to “the picture” of the design, rather than the rich data within it. This is why we architected DWF to support the complete data. We are seeing that organizations who create and share rich data with their extended teams – including 2D drawings, 3D models and non graphical data like building properties, model animations and bill of materials – are moving to a digital review process and re-using this data for other needs outside the CAD department. For example, we have customers who have been able to adopt a digital manufacturing process with the combination of Inventor and Design Review. The factory floor personnel can view animations and take measurements of the 3D models published from Inventor, this alone eliminates downtime.
The process has been viewed as one way and that has likely been an impediment. Our customers have presented a real need and value in having two way communication between the CAD user and their extended teams which is why we’ve built our platform with “round tripping” in mind. With Autodesk solutions CAD users can share rich data with team members - be they assemblers on the factory floor, building contractors or utility service engineers - who can then review, mark up and send back their comments to the original author who can, from within their design application, view, track and integrate these comments. There are huge productivity gains for everyone when the communication is two way.
Finally, I believe lack of applications beyond basic viewing and printing has prevented full adoption of digital workflows. This is why we make our DWF Toolkit, including the spec and source code, available free from our website. We want to encourage and enable the development of purpose built applications beyond basic viewing and printing.

Recently Autodesk decided to offer Design Review for free. What is the strategy behind this decision?

Our strategy of offering Design Review as a free download was primarily driven by customer demand. In particular our manufacturing customers told us that moving to free would help them get some of their key stakeholders – such as suppliers – to adopt digital review processes.
By offering everyone free publishing from our design applications and free review and markup tools with Autodesk Design Review, we are able to addresses these requests.

How have the DWF technologies and tools been received outside of the Autodesk users’ community so far?

DWF is received really well outside of what we’d consider the traditional community of Autodesk software users. We see this directly in the number of downloads of Design Review and the DWF Toolkit but also indirectly with the hundreds of partners worldwide who are building tools and applications based on our technology. Last year, for example, we worked with both Microsoft and Google to develop the ability search, index and return DWF files posted on the web. Actions like this really help us meet our objective of democratizing CAD data well beyond our traditional user community.

Autodesk recently joined other tech companies such as Google and Adobe in opening its Labs up to the end users. How are you incorporating all the feedback you receive into the development process?

Autodesk Labs expose end users to a collection of technologies that may or may not be developed into products

Yes, we recently launched Autodesk Labs (labs.autodesk.com) that exposes end users to a collection of technologies that may or may not be developed into Autodesk products. Autodesk Labs receives direct feedback from its community of users through e-mail and on discussion boards. Specific feature requests are sent to the product manager responsible for the application. These requests are then evaluated, and prioritized on the product roadmap.
Autodesk Freewheel, our zero client viewer, for instance, was originally just available via Labs. People liked it so much they wanted to use it in their production processes. So we created a production version of the service. Further feedback noted that users were eager to publish to Freewheel directly from Autodesk design applications. We responded by releasing plug-ins for AutoCAD, Revit and Inventor.

What is or could be the role of a viewing technology such as DWF in a PDM or PLM system for a large corporation?

we provide the building blocks for enterprises to visualize and correlate CAD data with backend PLM and PDM systems

With the flexibility of our Viewer APIs and our Free DWF Toolkit we provide the building blocks for enterprises to visualize and correlate CAD data with backend PLM and PDM systems.
Today Design Review automatically correlates the information published in a DWF so for instance when you click on a BOM item or component assembly in DWF you also see the related 3D part(s) highlighted and visually correlated. The same works in 2D.
Leveraging CAD data either inside a DWF or connecting from external back end systems is a big advantage of our solution. In fact, DWF essentially provides a “container” and a format for connecting 2D or 3D CAD graphics with the CAD attributes and data. We also realize much of the CAD information and attributes can be outside the CAD system, so we provide conventions to allow those systems to easily leverage, enrich, correlate and work with the CAD graphics and data already published to DWF.

I would like to thank Mary Hope McQuiston for taking the time to do this interview. If you have any questions for Mary or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

An Interview with David Opsahl, CEO of Actify (Spinfire)

David Opsahl is the CEO of Actify, the company that makes the SpinFire products for CAD data visualization. The CAD data visualization market is going through some very important changes with acquisitions (Cimmetry and Agile) and new products (Acrobat 3D) available to end users. Actify has been in this market for several years and has witnessed this evolution. In order to get a qualified opinion on the implications of these changes I walked the few San Francisco blocks that separate Novedge from Actify and interviewed David. Here is the interview.

David, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

Sure. I’ve been involved with manufacturing software since 1977, first as a user at companies like Boeing and Bechtel, and then on the vendor side at companies such as Computervision [acquired by PTC]. Tecnomatix [acquired by UGS, acquired by Siemens], Division [acquired by PTC], PTC, Aspect Development, Adaptive Media, and Cardonet. I’ve done a variety of tasks at each of these places, from software engineering, applications engineering, sales and sales management, general manager, and business development. I became involved with Actify in 2004 when I was asked to join them as vice president of business development.

Actify has been in the business of making CAD data visualization software -- or DDC (Digital Design Communication) as you like to call it -- for many years. What are the main changes you have seen in this market?

view, measure, markup isn’t the business problem, merely one tool needed to solve the business problem

In some respects, I’ve not seen much in the way of change. From a pure “visualization” perspective, things in this market are more or less like they’ve always been in this market, and we still struggle with many of the challenges companies in this space did ten years ago – that is, of course, if you define the problem as “view, measure, and markup” of 2D and 3D CAD data as I think most people do. Having said that, there are some changes worth mentioning. One is the inclusion of PMI data as part of what we can expose downstream of engineering – that is a huge opportunity for improving communications in the manufacturing industry. Another is the recognition in the market that “view, measure, markup” isn’t the business problem, merely one tool needed to solve the business problem. That leads to a whole different way of looking at the business.

Until recently DDC (Digital Design Communication) was a business of small and medium companies. Now with Adobe and Oracle entering the arena of DDC, what is going to change?

they (Adobe) have the potential to solve the premier roadblock to innovation in this space: the data format problem

Honestly, I don’t think that much will change, at least not quickly. Where Adobe is concerned, they have the potential to solve the premier roadblock to innovation in this space – the data format problem. I can’t think of any other industry where application data so critical to improving business performance is locked away in proprietary formats. And the CAD vendors for the most part like to see it that way, and while I think the days of proprietary formats are numbered, we have a ways to go . With respect to Oracle, I don’t see them having any impact on the market. PLM vendors have tried many times to make visualization a part of their solution, and it doesn’t seem to help them sell more software. Oracle bought Adaptive Media’s visualization software years ago, and if you aren’t using Oracle PLM you never see it. I could be wrong, but I think Oracle bought Agile for Agile and Eigner [acquired by Agile], not for Cimmetry – although I think Autovue is a good fit for Oracle’s platform and will become part of their offering. But that only changes the market for Oracle’s products – and the trickle down there, if any, remains to be seen.

I have expressed a few times the opinion that DDC products have a huge unexploited potential. What is blocking products like SpinFire from becoming more popular in the design and manufacturing industry?

get rid of (the format problem), and you’ll see lots of breakout innovation in this space

I’ll go right back to what I said earlier – the format problem. Get rid of that, and you’ll see lots of breakout innovation in this space. Secondly, the unexploited potential I believe has to do with the utilization of data by folks some distance away in terms of skills and experience from engineers – and that tends to drive product development for in our market from a different perspective. If one defines success in this industry by the number of people outside engineering who pay for a capability and then, year after year, renew their commitment to that product financially, I think we tend to lead the market in that area.

Historically companies in the DDC industry considered data translation a different business than data visualization. Each addresses different users and requires different products. Acrobat 3D is changing this unwritten rule. Is Adobe breaking a taboo or making a mistake?

in Acrobat 3D, it isn’t apparent to me how you would export to another CAD format

I don’t know if I agree with your premise that Acrobat 3D is changing this unwritten rule. Clearly they have that ability technologically, but I don’t know if that means they will exploit it. In the current version of Acrobat3D (V8) that I have, it isn’t apparent to me how you would export to another CAD format, which I think is what you are talking about. On top of that, if they solve the format problem, then the need for translators is moot, isn’t it? Although I can’t speak for them, if I were Adobe I would want PRC to be supported by the CAD vendors given a choice.

Some companies are exploring the possibility of bringing the CAD viewer inside the web browser without requiring the installation of plugins thanks to new technologies such as Ajax. What is your opinion on and vision for this new approach?

No question in my mind you will see more product development done in this area, but there are some serious technology challenges in making this work. Not all of them have to do with the parts of the problem Ajax solves. Not to sound repetitive, but to a large degree innovation in this area faces some of the same roadblocks we discussed earlier. For instance, eliminating plug-ins requires extremely efficient code that can be downloaded in real-time or near real-time. In order to do that job in the most efficient matter, the data format must also be highly efficient, and the industry isn’t there – yet. And, there will always be the need to allow people to work “disconnected “, so a world without plug-ins doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.

A few years ago Actify tried to enter the corporate market with a client server solution. For lack of determination the experiment didn’t fully succeed. Have you given up on this new market or do you have other plans?

the Actify vision some years back was very well thought out, but perhaps ahead of its time

The Actify vision some years back was very well thought out, but perhaps ahead of its time, and along the way, I think its evolved somewhat. The original client/server solution was envisaged as something similar to what Outlook and Exchange are today, if taken alone. However, there are a number of needs in a collaboration solution not provided by that model. Today, if one looks at the Office platform, with tools like Sharepoint, Infopath, and so forth, you can see how that vision for Outlook and Exchange has become much richer. Our vision has evolved similarly, but one can easily see how that original model has continued to be the starting point.

Actify is an innovative company, with a tradition of embracing new technologies in their early stages. What technologies do you see out there now that could play a role in you current or future products?

As much as I’d like to answer that question – I won’t, for obvious reasons. What I can tell you is that we have no intention of eliminating our history of technological innovation. To the contrary, I believe fairly soon we’ll have some things to say that will explain just how much we will continue in that tradition.

I would like to thank David Opsahl for the interview today. If you have any questions for David or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

Back to the Future: CAD Returns to the Drawing Board?

Yesterday Microsoft announced a new product called Microsoft Surface. It's a computerized table -- the top surface is a computer display that  recognizes and interacts with physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows for hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music, and maps (see TechCrunch post).

I can envision a CAD table where designers browse, view, annotate, and discuss 3D models

I'm wondering how it will affect the CAD world. I can easily envision a near future with a "CAD table" where designers can browse, view, annotate, and discuss 3D models. Not so apparent is a table interface for 3D modeling.

A new technology that has been the labs for many years (see this example at NIST) is now becoming available to us.

Let me know your opinion, hopes, and expectations for this innovative product!   

Franco Folini

Can Oracle Shake the CAD Visualization Market?

Two days ago, on May 15, Oracle (ORCL) announced the acquisition of Agile (AGIL), a company known mostly for its PLM products, for $495 million. I don’t want to discuss the impact of Oracle in the PLM market here. If you're interested you can find more detail at PC World, LinuxWorld, eWeek, Roy Wildeman, Ralph Grabowski's blog, and S. Sadagopan's blog.

What intrigues me is the impact of this acquisition on the CAD visualization market. Agile purchased Cimmetry, the well known CAD visualization company, in February 2005 for $45M cash. And now (through Agile) Oracle owns the AutoVue product line.

Agile is not exactly an example of a successful company. According to Yahoo Finance, they haven't managed to make a profit in the last 3 years. There are also rumors that the Cimmetry acquisition has not been very successful despite the fact that Cimmetry was a fully profitable and established company.

With the appearance of Oracle the landscape of CAD data visualization is changing one more time. It is too early to say what Larry Ellison’s strategy will be, but the main question is: Can a corporation-oriented company such as Oracle foster the end-user product-line of Cimmetry?

The CAD visualization market is going through a series of important changes. With Adobe recently entering this arena with Acrobat 3D, and now Oracle with Cimmetry, I see opportunities and risks on the horizon.

CAD visualization can find the place it deserves on every desktop of every manufacturing company

The main opportunity is for the entire CAD visualization market to mature and reach its potential of millions of users. CAD visualization software can find the place it deserves on every desktop of every manufacturing company. This can generate important business opportunities even for small companies such as Actify.
The risk is that the small software companies will be pushed out of the market by the competition between the two big players. Rivalry between the two giants could drive the prices down to a level that would not be profitable for small software manufacturers.

Franco Folini

Note: Larry Ellison picture is from Gaspar Torriero blog, the composition with AutoVue box is mine.

An Interview with Doug Halliday, Business Development Manager at Adobe (Acrobat 3D)

Doug Halliday is the Business Development Manager specializing in manufacturing at Adobe. Doug's main focus is on Acrobat 3D and its applications for design and manufacturing. Recently he started a blog where he talks about Acrobat 3D and shares his experiences with the Acrobat users community. I first met Doug when, after posting my impressions on Acrobat 3D, I left a comment on his blog with some feedback about the new Acrobat 3D 8. I thought our discussion would be of interest to a larger audience, so I asked Doug to address my questions and concerns in the form of an interview. He kindly accepted.

Doug, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role in Adobe?
Sure, I would be happy to. But, before I start, let me thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I am still somewhat new to Adobe, having come on board late last year. I am in a business development role focused upon manufacturing.  I do some speaking, participate in numerous events, work a bit with some of our partners and resellers and spend as much time as I can with customers.
I have been pretty fortunate. I came to Adobe after a number of years – almost 30, in the automotive and IT industries. I spent time in various technical, managerial and executive roles.  I have had the opportunity to explore product development and manufacturing engineering, but I have never strayed far away from PLM, which is my first love. I have really concentrated over the past several years on collaboration, which I think is the future of PLM.

PDF is perceived and valued as a safe and easy way of making static copies of digital documents. With the new release of Acrobat 3D, Adobe is proposing a different role for PDF files. How can the two views coexist?
You know, I used to think of Acrobat and PDF as just a way to create static, secure copies of documents too, but that was some time ago. I think some people in manufacturing are like I was. I think one of our challenges is continuing to grow the awareness of what the product and format can do from a collaboration, interoperability and technical illustrations perspective.
Something to keep in mind, of course, is many people asked the same question when Adobe first grew PDF beyond its traditional roots, the creative pro and print production area. I think you'd find wide agreement that expanding PDF to be just as applicable to the general business environment has been quite a success.
Adobe’s first big move from static to "richer" PDF’s was to add a collaboration layer – the ability to add and share comments in a review and markup process. The second move we termed the “intelligent document”. That was around 2002-2004 – integrating technology gained from Adobe’s acquisition of Accelio made PDF an XML vehicle that could be dynamically connected to backend systems like ERP, PDM, SCM, or others. PDF now enables linking structured XML data to form fields for dynamic data presentation and collection. This enables PDF to extend the reach of these back-end systems via the Reader.
So, today, PDF is quite a flexible format. Combined with Adobe Reader, it delivers an “infrastructure” that allows enterprise integration and combined services like Digital Rights Management, digital signatures, rich multi-media content, as well as a way to support native file attachments. Javascripts can provide dynamic and tailored business logic interactions with PDF, too.
I first saw Acrobat 3D almost two years ago. That was the day I met Francois le Masne. Francois is now director of Acrobat 3D Business for Adobe. He really opened my eyes that day. Today, I think of PDF as a vehicle that can assimilate more and more complex information, including 3D, and be broadly distributed and quite easily adopted on a global basis.

Different categories of users interact with 3D models in different ways. For example, when a user needs to look at the back of a 3D model, a mechanical designer rotates the 3D object while an architect moves around the object.  How Acrobat 3D manage to serve wide and diverse group of users with a single user interface?
We really are aimed at things like collaboration between engineering and manufacturing where the cost and complexity of more specialized tools can be a hindrance. The idea really is to add value to what is already in place. Acrobat 3D allows a myriad of 3D formats to converge into a common, well understood document standard that allows anybody to engage with 3D content, regardless of operating systems, CAD capability and so forth. And it delivers the functions that are common to these business areas, mainly to "view" and "understand" the model. It also allows authors to save views, including comments, to drive others in an appropriate way to manipulate a scene. However, scripting capabilities and multiple navigation tools are provided which allow customization of the experience for different purposes.

I had the impression that Adobe didn't push the first release of Acrobat 3D very much. Now, with version 8, your company approach seems to have changed. Adobe is investing important resources in promoting Acrobat and PDF in the design and manufacturing world. What are Adobe ambitions on a 5 - 10 year scale?
I am not sure I would agree that we didn’t push the first version, but certainly we have continued to invest more resources.  I think some of the sense you have about the level of activity is related to significant progress in the latest version of Acrobat 3D compared with the original version.  That is generating lots of interest from users, non-users, and the larger CAD/PLM community.
With our acquisitions of OKYZ in 2004 and Trade & Technologies France in 2006, Adobe has a really strong 3D engineering team – tons of industry experience. A good deal of OKYZ and TTF technology is embedded into Acrobat 3D V8, capabilities like the PRC format, interoperability, support for PMI and compression. But we haven’t come close to integrating all of the technology we gained as part of those acquisitions, so the possibilities moving forward over the coming years are exciting.

You are based in Michigan and therefore you must have a lot of interaction with automotive companies. How is Acrobat 3D perceived by the "big guys"?

Acrobat 3D will help the automotive people address the exchange problems along the supply chain

You bet I do see the automotive folks a lot and I think we are gaining great traction…maybe “excitement” is a better term. As you may have seen, we just announced Renault’s significant adoption of Acrobat 3D. As you know, the automotive OEM’s and Tier 1 suppliers have had significant challenges with globalization, supply chain communication, and so forth. PDM is recognized as an excellent vehicle (pardon the pun) to push engineering information beyond their management systems and firewalls. These guys, for the most part, are pretty advanced in the PLM space, and they’re going to want to maximize the return on the investment they’ve already made. Acrobat 3D will help the automotive people address the exchange problems along the supply chain, where standards are badly needed. With PDF and Adobe Reader already deployed worldwide, the difficult-to-deploy plug-ins required by the CAD/PLM vendors are not needed. Adobe’s strategy is to leverage the Reader, which we’ve distributed over 525 million copies of worldwide in about the last two years, and Flash, which is installed on well over 90 percent of web-connected computers worldwide, as much as possible. That’s why we believe Adobe is poised to become a first-in-class, cross platform and device software infrastructure for information and rich internet application distribution.

Many of your competitors are working on providing process-based solutions (PDM, PLM systems) to the problem of archiving, sharing, and delivering technical data. Acrobat seems to approach the same category of problems from the file format point of view. Can you explain the Adobe strategy on this topic?
PDF is on its way to becoming a truly open standard (see Adobe press release), it’s trusted and already part of most companies’ day-to-day business processes. We believe PDF can extend the capabilities of management systems. It can also provide off-line capabilities for processes like RFx, field service delivery, MRO, etc.
Let me give you an example: A dynamic PDF form containing XML information coming from PDM and ERP systems is sent for bid purposes to suppliers in China by e-mail. The document “flies off-line”, collects information from the bidder, and is sent back to these backend systems via e-mail or direct XML exchange. During this off-line period, our Policy Server product, combined with the management system, allows the sender to keep constant control of who accesses the information package as well as tracking all events (read, modify, fill-in, print, copy, etc.), revoke users, and modify rights on usage. So both revision control and IP protection.
I guess the point here is we see what we’re doing with PDF via Acrobat 3D and our LiveCycle servers as being complementary to the PDM/PLM/ERP systems.

The acquisition of TTF brought to Adobe the skills and technical background required for approaching the design and manufacturing software market. Is Adobe considering other acquisitions to strengthen its position?
Well that sort of gets back to the question of what our ambitions are.  I can’t speak to future acquisitions, of course.  But I will say this: Adobe is constantly creating and in search of new technologies that will help address customer needs. And, again, we haven’t come close to integrating all of the OKYZ and TTF technologies, which opens a number of possibilities for continued innovation in the 3D space. The imagination can run wild.

I would like to thank Doug Halliday for taking the time to speak with me today. If you have any questions for Doug or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

An Interview with Antonio Pellizzaro of Actify (SpinFire)

Antonio Pellizzaro is the Lead Developer of Actify, the software manufacturer of the SpinFire product line, a group of applications for CAD data visualization and sharing. Actify and Novedge are both located in San Francisco, a few blocks away. I invited Antonio to participate in the following interview:

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your contribution to the SpinFire product line?
I've been with Actify for 9 years. I had the good fortune to work with the founders [Cristiano Sacchi and Mark Gisi], who first saw the huge market need for design communication software. (Actify is the pioneer of 3D visualization of CAD design to improve communication.) My work ranged a lot through the years, but I mainly focused on the graphics for SpinFire (formerly 3DView) and the importers (software modules to interface SpinFire with all the different formats it supports).

What is the most challenging part in designing and building a CAD visualization software such as SpinFire?

CAD viewers fulfill the need for informal digital communication

I think the challenge is to provide an easy-to-use tool for informal communication for all different types of users. The "consumers" of 3D data are varied, with diverse needs ranging from the basic viewing of a simple part, to the most advance measurement and handling of very complex assemblies. Users want a one-stop solution for all their needs. The ultimate customer need is communication: a good tool must facilitate the communication between users, by allowing the addition of markups, comments, the history of reviews, and data searches. All these are key to a successful CAD visualization software. Another key element is the ability to read files generated by different CAD systems. Users are receiving files from many sources and, as I said before, they want a one-stop solution.
Also, the real challenge all the players in this market will face is the ability to provide a complete solution to the technical data communication problem. CAD visualization is just one aspect of the whole solution: very important, but not enough alone. While PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) systems provide very structured and formal communication, CAD viewers fulfill the need for informal digital communication. There is a big gap between the two and Actify is the only one who provides a solution for people in the middle area. Design Share has been designed to meet the needs of these customers.

From the technical point of view, how do you compare PDF and ".3D", the Actify proprietary file format?

adding 3D (to PDF) is a good idea but... many people will be confused on the use of PDF

In my opinion the main difference is that PDF files can store the exact geometry along with the tessellated data, while the ".3D" files store only the tessellated model. There are definitely a lot of benefits in storing the exact geometry, but, assuming we want to stay in the strictly Visualization area (meaning no advance measurements and no export to other formats) then I don't think it is a good idea. Especially it's not a good idea to provide the functionality to export IGES and STEP. When I think of PDF, I think of a view/print only document. Adding 3D content is a good idea, but the way it is implemented now, it is going away from view only document, and it is opening the road to data translation. I am sure that many people will be confused on the use of PDF. With the ".3D" format users know exactly what is possible to do and what is not; ".3D" is meant to be a visualization and communication format. This is a huge topic, and it may deserve a blog post by itself. There are pros and cons for both sides.

In the last few weeks there has been a lot of talk about Microsoft Windows Vista and how Vista can slow down the performances of 3D intensive programs. Did you experience any problem with SpinFire Professional?
Not at all. We actually experience much better memory management by the OS, especially when dealing with very large assemblies. The only thing to keep in mind when upgrading to Vista, is to upgrade the graphic drivers by downloading them from the graphic card vendor's website. Many users are not familiar with the upgrade process, and many don't even know what graphic card (or chipset) they have.
I would have expected Microsoft to do a better job in providing the most up-to-date drivers at the time of installation or through Windows Updates.

Actify SpinFire can read/import several CAD file formats. Do you have a special software architecture to handle so many file formats?
It was clear from the beginning that being able to visualize files of different formats was key to the success of SpinFire. We developed an architecture that allows us to add new importers without shipping a new version of the software.
This architecture also enables a third party developer to write his own importers to enhance SpinFire capabilities to display other formats.

Do you think the future of CAD data visualization will be heavily based on the new standard file formats like U3D (Universal 3D) or XPS (XML Paper Specification), or will a proprietary file format emerge as dominant?

one (3D) file format will NOT emerge as dominant for all the sectors

3D data is so vastly used, and for so many industries, that one file format will not emerge as dominant for all the sectors. I think we will see dominant file formats for specific industries or specific needs, and it will be a proprietary format. Adobe has the resources to heavily push the PDF/PRC file format, but companies who already standardized on a file format will not change. (I am thinking of JT and our ".3D". It will be interesting to see if Adobe, i.e. TTF, will provide tools to convert JT and ".3D" files into PDF/PRC.)

In your opinion, what will the next generation of CAD data visualization software will look like?
I think that the visualization software are mature enough. I don't think we will see radical changes in the existing software. Viewers helped adopt 3D as way of communicating design, and now, as a result, the real problem is not visualizing the 3D data but managing it along with all the complementary data.
The main area of development will be Collaboration and Finding 3D information. The next generation solution will include a visualization software and other web-based software to help users manage all those electronic designs.

I would like to thank Antonio Pellizzaro for taking the time to speak with me today. All SpinFire products mentioned in this interview are available online from the Novedge website. If you have any questions for Antonio or for Novedge, just leave a comment below, and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

Is the New Acrobat 3D headed for Failure or Success?

I like "CAD Data Visualization," another may prefer DDC (Digital Design Communication), someone else might like the ambitious acronym PDC (Product Design Collaboration), but whatever name you choose, this kind of software program has been around for many years. The central idea is to provide affordable ways to visualize the content of a CAD file for those who don't own the original expensive CAD system. Over time these tools evolved from view-only to view-share-and-communicate.

In January 2006 Adobe released the first version of Acrobat 3D joining the group of software manufacturers offering CAD visualization solutions. Acrobat 3D 1.0 is a special version of Adobe's popular PDF product. Despite suffering from the typical problems of every first release, it indicated Adobe's ambitions for the CAD world. Now, one year later, Adobe is getting ready to lunch a new and improved version of Acrobat 3D. Most of the features in the new release are based on the technology Adobe acquired with TTF (Trade & Technologies France), a French software company specializing in CAD interoperability. For a detailed list of feature improvements for the new version you can check the Adobe pages.

when a company adds a new feature it can't dictate to users when to use it or not

Last Friday Adobe invited me and other bloggers such as Deelip Menezes to an online preview of the new Acrobat 3D version 8. I would like to share my opinion on this new product and the Adobe strategy for the 3D world.

Data Visualization or Data Translation?

While the first version of Acrobat 3D was a visualization-only solution, the new release will offer the option to export a 3D model from PDF to IGES and STEP file formats. According to Adobe, this feature is not intended for a CAD-to-CAD data translation and, according to them, PDF should be used only to move geometry from a CAD system to a post-CAD system, such as CAM, rendering, animation, etc. While theoretically this is not a bad idea, I expect users will ignore Adobe recommendations. When a company adds a new feature to its products, it can't dictate to users when to use it or not. Pretty soon Acrobat users will start to use PDF to move geometric information among CAD systems, and Adobe will find itself pulled into the data translation area. Without a very strong technical background in that field, this is not a nice position to be in!

To PDF or not to PDF?

Over the years PDF has earned a great reputation as a multi-platform, reliable, mostly version-insensitive, compact, and standard format. Leveraging this huge popularity, Adobe has gradually transformed PDF into a sort of container where you can put almost everything: text, images, sound, forms, videos, and 3D models. This seems like a great idea to expand the PDF market, but it can easily backfire and undermine the reputation of PDF.
Let's look for example at the problems that can arise from storing a CAD model in a PDF file. 3D models are not as simple as text or pictures. In fact, in just one release PDF internal representation moved from one to 4 different 3D file formats: (1) the internal tessellated representation, (2) U3D specification 1, (3) U3D specification 2, (4) PRC (the TTF file format). It's a slippery slide: if this proliferation of formats continue, in the near future receiving a PDF would not guarantee simple and easy access at information contained inside the file. If this happen, users will have to learn that what they know about PDF documents doesn't apply to PDF 3D models.

Do you want Geometry or Tessellation?

When you create a 3D PDF this is the critical question asked by the Adobe software.  A tessellation-only PDF is a safe way to share design information and to protect your intellectual property. It's like sharing a picture of your 3D model. On the other hand, when the 3D PDF also includes the geometry, sharing the PDF is equivalent to sharing the original model. Anybody can extract from the PDF file a STEP or IGES copy of the original geometry. As you can imagine, the consequences of this simple decision -- tessellation or geometry -- are enormous. The problem is: does the average user know what a tessellation is?  Does he know all the implications of this choice?  Based on what I've seen, Acrobat 3D user interface is not doing a good job in helping users to understand the meaning of "tessellation" and "geometry" and to appreciate the consequences of the two options.

What is in a PDF?

Because of the structural ambiguity between tessellation and geometry, when you receive, send, or archive a PDF you don't really know what's inside. When we store a PDF file on our hard disk, are we archiving valuable geometric information or just a bunch of small triangles (tessellation) good only to create nice images on our screen? The only way to tell the difference is to open the file and see if the "Export" option is enabled or not. This ambiguity can easily become a CAD manager nightmare!

Do we really need another 3D file format?

When you generate a 3D PDF selecting the option "include-geometry" Acrobat 3D converts your original CAD file to PRC file format and embeds the PRC representation in the PDF file. If you share or exchange geometric information using PDF, you are just using a PRC file nicely wrapped within the familiar PDF file format -- it is still a PRC file. Adobe chose PRC because it's the TTF file format that they own, not for any specific technical reason. Why didn't they embed a fully standard STEP file instead of a PRC? I'm sure the Adobe marketing has a good explanation, but from the end-user point of view, now we have one more 3D file format to deal with. And nobody needs it!

Acrobat Reader Nightmare.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is essential to the Acrobat 3D success. For most of the users Acrobat Reader is just a way to open PDF files they receive by e-mail or download from the Internet. Over the years Acrobat Reader has become a huge, slow, and unstable piece of software. If we don't hear many complaints from end-users it's because this is a viewing-only tool. When it crashes (not a rare event on my computer) the user doesn't lose any data. He/she can restart the program, reopen the PDF document and everything is OK. If Adobe couldn't manage to develop a reliable Acrobat Reader when PDF contains only text and pictures, what will happen when PDF comes with 3D models, in one of the 4 different formats?

After listing all the limitations of Acrobat 3D and Adobe strategy, let me explain why I believe Adobe has a chance to succeed with Acrobat 3D.

Adobe Acrobat 3D is here to stay.

The acquisition of TTF and the investments in the new version of Acrobat 3D are the proof of Adobe's commitment to design data communication. I believe there is a huge opportunity in this market. So far I haven't seen any company with the strategy, resources, and determination to develop and conquer this market. Adobe is a good candidate that I'll be watching.

Acrobat doesn't have competition.

Today Acrobat 3D still a young product. Over time it can grow into a mature, full-featured product. Adobe is looking at a huge opportunity -- even more so because there is no real competitor to challenge Acrobat 3D. Currently, the CAD Data Visualization is a market only partially exploited, controlled by a handful of single-brand solutions and a few small companies. The single brand solutions, like Autodesk DWF and e-drawings, are by definition limited to the products of just one single software manufacturer; they don't have any appeal for other software systems users. The other competitors are mostly small companies. Some of them are offering excellent products but they don't have the strategies or the resources to develop and occupy this huge potential market.

Adobe is like Switzerland.

A CAD data communication solution can be successfully promoted only by a company that doesn't own, and is not related to any of the major CAD systems. This is one of the reasons for the failure of the Autodesk DWF file format. After some adjustments to Acrobat 3D (that will presumably require a couple of releases) Adobe will be in a perfect position to propose itself as a neutral and reliable partner to manage the design communications of all major manufacturers, regardless of which CAD system each company uses or will use in the future.

These are just my opinions, but I would like to hear yours too. Please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts with me and all the readers of this blog.

Franco Folini