3D PDFs

Some of you may have already discovered this. 3D PDF has been around since about '06 or '07.

Back then it was a PITA as you had to have the drivers for the specific software you were outputing from.

Seems to be much slicker now. Here is an example.

To rotate the model, use the left mouse button. To move around, hold down the ctrl key while using the left mouse button. Right mouse button brings up a menu of options.

I'm using Acrobat 8 and it works fine with that version.

 

yes great tool with a free trial and if you like it even measures tube wand thicknes and what not
had a look at your gallery again dreamer, nice renders, compliments!

some imports to 3d acrobat even accepts mappings but having a hard time repeating it
have try'd many 3d scripts but still think open 3d should be a i-net standard
like this cellphone that again needs flash, just dxf into flash? i doubt it..
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_w910-3d-spin-2007.php

 

Thanks yipster

not sure what you mean by 'free trial'. I am curious whether you can view the 3D stuff with plain 'ol Acrobat Reader.

I haven't experimented with textures yet. That's a tough one.

Cheers.

 

i have only the 'ol Acrobat Reader installed and it works fine for me... no problem with opening your attachement at all...
although i of course cannot verify what i am missing since i do not know the original content...

 

with "free trial" i meant a month working download at adobe pro extended
standard its compatable with reader7 upward but 3d acrobat goes much deeper and with more settings
and possibility's than meets the eye. it was with 3ds import i belive i had some mapping in, nice
but havent got it figered out yet, love to see 3d boats like those mobile phones
ah, guess i like to check flash now too, coffeee!

 

Well, if you saw the model of a deck plug then you saw everything . Now, if you right-click, do you get a menu of options? I have Acrobat 8 professional and I think that might be what Yipster is referring to. Good to know you can at lease see it and spin it around.

There are a surprising number of 3d viewers out there. SolidWorks has a free one called e-Drawings. It's a great viewer if your machine can handle it (requires hardware OpenGL). It will support textures applied in SolidWorks. You can view SolidWorks, ProE, STL, and AutoCAD files with eDrawings. Another one is called 3D Via. The interesting thing here is that it uses 3D XML which is somewhat open. You can include textures in 3D Via. Then of course there's the VRML which has been around a long time but hasn't been updated since the 90s. Most modelers can output VRML. You can include textures in VRML, but the files become incredibly huge.

 

must have try'd most of them before they crashed my windows 98
doing better now crashing whole hd's running vista x64, but we learn
3D via seems to be the dassault viewer that wants to be installed first
point i was making is why not a universal direct 3d view in (D)html

 

Simlab software has an easy to use plugin to directly publish a 3d-PDF from Rhino and SketchUp.

Free trial: http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins.aspx

 

wow... thanks for the link Windvang ..

 

Works fine for me with the free version of Adobe Acrobat. Right click on the window brings up the options menu.

My SpaceNavigator controls movement, same as in Rhino.

I'll be using 3d PDFs to send graphics of a current project.

 

Windvang thanks for the link, the rhino plugin works great and from some of the test files I have done it puts materials ,like glass, in the file. It handles normal surfaces and mesh surfaces straight into 3dpdf.

 

But the old gremlin that's lurking behind a nice 3D presentation is the risk of simply giving away your work in a convenient 3D format that can be lifted from the pdf and imported into a cad package again.

If you have spent a lot of time developing and testing a hullform and if the pdf is for general marketing to the public it's much safer to animate the rotating 3D and then embed the animation rather than embedding the actual shape.

 

Is all that done in Acrobat, or do you have another tool for the animation ?

Can you zoom and rotate the same way as with 3d Pdf ?

 

You can animate from Rhino and there are plugins for fancier animation I think it's called Bongo?

No zoom and rotate, all you can do is play the animation, if you can rotate the 3d model within a PDF then it's embedded and can be un-embedded unfortunately.

cheers

 

ok 3d pdf is a juwel yet still wanna check flash for direct draw
like vrml quik try'd anitest pdf rotates and animate simultaniously
but i'll keep having problems getting maps in, see maptest pdf
that shows a, ok mismapped, mercury but also that it should work
ive try'd a hundred times and way's, patience isnt my greatest virtue tho
havent tryd to get the mesh out of a 3d pdf yet but is possible i read
and wiser presentation forms must be thought of, on paper perhaps?