Home
Introduction
As organizations rich in digital assets aspire to faster decision-making and improved team collaboration, PDF3D® empowers organisations to transform digital data into interactive, real-time visualisation shareable 3D PDF technical documents.
With the PDF3D® SDK Library, interfaces and plug-ins, enterprise applications with 3D data can be extended to publish, share and distribute interactive models through email or the web. With Adobe's ubiquitous support for 3D viewing, a ready-made platform is available on most desktops ready to receive 3D PDF content. ISVs and application developers can now add "Save As 3D PDF" menus using the PDF3D SDK, high-level tool kit. Models are injected into new or existing documents using the PDF3D® (patent pending) C++ Library, designed for any developer with 3D data to publish. When models are embedded in a PDF file, recipients can rotate, zoom and pan the 3D PDF model while reading the document, or while giving a PowerPoint® presentation. With PDF3D® you can create interactive 3D PDF documents, integrate real time 3D contents, bring to life your PDF documents, improve your production pipeline work-flow and inject 3D view ports into existing PDF templates with total independence.
New Solution
Demand for 3D PDF publications is increasing within the engineering, technical and scientific communities as a method to capture and communicate complex data. The rich and ubiquitous PDF format provides organizations with both a powerful and open approach for sharing 3D models. With embedded 3D interactive models much more can be communicated than with traditional 2D static images. Existing 3D data conversion paths and utilities don't always convert without corrupting the model and in any case cannot be seamlessly hidden inside your application. PDF3D SDK enables direct publication of complex data as interactive 3D PDF files from a "Save as 3D PDF" button within your own application.
Developer Oriented
Any developer with 3D data to publish should consider PDF3D®. Application developers, programmers, ISVs or any software development team that has 3D data will find the PDF3D SDK very easy to use through a well designed C++ interface, dlls, utilities and source examples allows 3D PDF files to be generated in one simple step.
Latest Technology
The PDF3D SDK is based on technology developed over many years in scientific data visualisation from Visual Technology Services Ltd. The PDF3D SDK also ensures full compatibility with the latest PDF specification, the free Adobe Reader and full interoperability with related Adobe Acrobat applications. ISO standard PDF/E encoding methods are employed, including U3D, U3D with Right Hemisphere Compression, PRC (pure), and PRC-HCT (Highly Compressed Tessellation).
Benefits
Some of the many benefits of the PDF3D SDK include:
- Address Sophisticated Demand - In the engineering market, both individual and enterprise-level users are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of PDF solutions. Users now recognize that PDF has evolved to be the most popular sharable document format. The PDF Library SDK enables ISVs to keep pace with the ever-increasing expectations of their users, without forcing their users to buy 3rd party file converters.
- Leverage PDF Innovation - The PDF format will always be evolving as Adobe aggressively innovates and extends the Acrobat family of products. The PDF3D SDK ensures that ISVs can quickly leverage Adobe's PDF innovations.
- Compatibility with Acrobat - The PDF3D SDK is tested with the latest Adobe Reader, so is guaranteed to compatibility
- with Acrobat applications. Adobe claims that over 1 billion downloads of the free Acrobat Reader have been made to date, creating an instant world-wide delivery platform for your 3D content, with no more proprietary 3D viewers or plug-ins required.
- Decreased Development Time and Cost - Leveraging the PDF3D SDK means ISVs can get their PDF-enabled products to market faster - which will not only satisfy customer demand, but helps dramatically reduce R&D time, costs and headaches. The other alternative, researching the file format specifications and using open source partial solutions as your development foundation, takes much more time and ultimately has much higher maintenance costs.
- For web designers, enterprise system architects and production work-flow providers, the PDF3D XML Server enables server-side conversion deployment.
- For VTK (Visualization Tool Kit), AVS/Express, Coin3D (Open Inventor) and VRML based applications, the PDF3D SDK Library includes a ready-to-use integration classes, examples and tools.
- ParaView PDF3D Plugin direct integration interface
- Show Interactive 3D PDFs directly within PowerPoint presentations
Unique Characteristics
- First Library for producing 3D PDF files on the market
- Trusted 3D Viewer - Adobe well respected and trusted viewer installation
- Independent of Adobe, stand-alone development kit, no other licenses involved
- Allows inclusion of Annotation and Metadata in the same document as 3D model (not possible with VRML or most other solutions)
- Directly exploit world-wide availability of Acrobat Reader for showing 3D models
- Combines U3D, U3D-RHC, PRC, PRC-HCT with PDF embedding in one easy to use Library/API
- Dramatically simplify programmer's task to add 3D PDF capability
- Alternative to laboriously wading through ECMA standard, Intel References, Adobe's PDF subset specifications, then writing & maintaining your own code
- An alternative to Acrobat3D or similar products, directly producing content from data source applications (eliminate need for per-seat external solutions)
- Fully independent implementation of PRC, RHC compression systems.
- Simplifies user work-flow, avoids forcing users to learning another interface
- As Web3D efforts of Shockwave3D, VRML & X3D have remained niche due to the changing viewer market, now Adobe solution has put 3D PDF capability on millions of desktops, indicating recent change in marketplace
- Modern Programmer Development Tools (C++, .NET, CMake, Visual Studio)
- May be deployed in applications or web server environments for dynamic content
- Options to generate 3D PDF, or U3D (Universal 3D), PRC (Product Representation Compressed) formats.
- Animation modes for model sequences or rigid body dynamic movement
- Hyperlinks per 3D object, snap directly to other parts of the same document or external URLs
- Metadata query supported, each node can report arbitrary text to PDF Forms
- Location probe and Z scale factor controls available for PDF advanced navigation
- Full 2D API for text, graphics, images, legends, titles on PDF page
- Injection of 3D views into existing PDF documents, allows multitude of workflows
- Dynamic 3D labels, always face viewer in 3D scene
- Automatic creation of default view for 3D scene
- Automatically generated and embedded javascript system, pre-packaged controls
- Unicode fonts for UTF8 or UTF16 on 2D page or 3D labels
PDF3D SDK - C++ Library to write any 3D Model into a PDF file
The PDF3D C++ library enables direct publication of 3D Models into PDF files in a high-level convenient interface. Developers with 3D model, geometry or spatial data structures can easily add a PDF export path to their applications using the PDF3D Library. The library is designed for ease-of-use, is straight-forward and easy to learn, automatically setting defaults and hiding underlying complexity. The library leverages the latest features of Adobe's Acrobat Reader and the U3D standard.
PDF3D Library Architecture
The PDF3D Library is made of the following modules
- Interfaces - convenience kits for popular systems, such as ParaView, OpenSceneGraph, Coin3D, VTK, AVS/Express
- File converters for popular formats such as STL, 3DS and VRML
- PDF3D XML Server system, manages publication work-flow using XML scene specification, as dll or compiled utility.
- Conversion Module, C++ - capture 3D model content and attributes
- Export Module - 3D PDF file generation, with annotation
- While the conversion module provides service classes and interfaces to help convert a 3D Model into U3D data structures; the Export Module helps export the U3D or PRC data structures into a U3D/PRC file or fully embedded into a PDF file.
- Adobe's Acrobat Reader 9 or X (version 10) can be used to view the PDF files created by the Export Module, while U3D / PRC viewers can be used to view raw U3D/PRC files created by the Export Module if needed. All files are generated directly by the PDF3D Library without intermediate files.
- PDF page management, injection into existing documents, security settings, adding full 2D content for images, graphics and text.
Licenses
Various development and deployment license programs are available for PDF3D
SDK and plug-ins, including single-seat licenses, server licenses,
OEM/ISV integration
licenses, volume discounts, site licenses and academic institution licenses.
Technical package license controls are available, as node-locked or floating network
license server.
Please see website online ordering facility for single seat licenses and
contact
the company for details of other license programs.
PDF3D® is a registered trademark, brand of Visual Technology Services Ltd.
Copyright © 2003-2012, Visual Technology Services Ltd.