With the release of PDF3D Version 2.24, significant improvements have been made, including faster X3D loading, dark theming in PDF3D ReportGen, improved model tree management, and more. Windows users of SDK Pro will now be able to compile using Visual Studio 2022.
Leading 3D PDF tool provider PDF3D, a PDFTron company, releases the V2.24 major update demonstrating continued support for 3D technical publishing. The release includes the addition of Visual Studio 2022 compatibility for SDK Pro, improvements to the X3D loading system, new model tree management controls, dark theming within PDF3D ReportGen and 35 technical corrections.
This version also delivers fixes for vulnerabilities that have been identified in the previous release and for customers using PV+, Paraview support has been upgraded to V5.11.
The full PDF3D SDK Pro reference API documentation and technical guides are now available directly from our website.
To take advantage of these improvements, we strongly encourage all customers on active maintenance to upgrade as soon as possible. Active users should receive download links, please request technical support if you require assistance.
We’re pleased to announce these major changes in V2.24 in more detail, to see the full list, please visit our changelog.
Visual Studio 2022 for Windows SDK Pro Platforms
Last year, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2022 which was the first 64-bit version of Visual Studio and provided improvements to users in speed and performance advantages.
We have since benefited from this release in our own build process and in v2.24, have extended support for users on SDK Pro and added binaries to compile in Visual Studio 2022.
Alongside this, our support for previous Visual Studio versions, 2015, 2017 & 2019 is retained.
X3D Loading
In previous versions, some users noted issues with X3D (a popular 3D graphics format) loading cases. X3D loading in V2.24 has been drastically improved and now utilises pugixml V1.12. This has brought many benefits, including:
- Corrected cases of long X3D loading times (150k triangle x3d case improved loading time from 3000s to 15s, and 1M triangles in less than 30 seconds)
- Corrected cases of text labels missing character
- Corrected cases of font family issues and applied improved font substitution
Dark Theming
PDF3DReportGen users on all platforms may take advantage of dark theming. Simply toggle using the Light/Dark option in the top toolbar:
Model Tree
In previous versions of PDF3D, some conversions showed empty nodes in the U3DRHC tree. These nodes were artefacts of the conversion system and contained no useful information to the user.
In V2.24, such artefacts are automatically removed. In addition, a control has been added which allows users to change root node names.
For users using pdf3d.io please see XML documentation for information on PointResource and LightResource tags.
For users in SDK Pro, see documentation for PDF3DAdditionalResourcesNames class, with methods:
const char * getResourceFile () const
void setResourceFile (const char *)
const char * getJavaScriptId () const
void setJavaScriptId (const char *)
const char * getModelName () const
void setModelName (const char *)
PV+ – Paraview Version 5.11
Native ParaView has been updated from 5.5 to 5.11. This change brings in some great new features, including:
- Python 3 scripting support
- Plugin for Explicit Structured Grid datasets
- CONVERGE CFD post reader
- Hyper Tree Grid representation
- Expression Manager, Editor (with JSON save/restore)
- Server connection improvements
- New Space Mouse Interactor plugin for flying 3D interaction
- New Parametric Surfaces plugin
- Added recognition of .encas file extension for the Ensight Case Gold reader
Many more improvements are visible in the release notes
- Paraview 5.6
- Paraview 5.7
- Paraview 5.8
- Paraview 5.81
- Paraview 5.9
- Paraview 5.9.1
- Paraview 5.10
- Paraview 5.11
In addition to the plugins which are installed with ParaView, PV+ enhances and adds the capability to read additional file types:
- COMSOL – .mphtxt, .txt
- ESRI – ASCI DEM (.dem), Shape (.shp)
- Geo-Referenced Raster Image Files (.tiff, .jpg)
- GOCAD ASCII (.gp, .ts, .pl,. .vs, .vts, .vo)
- Serafim/Selafin FUTURE (.srf, .slf, .sel, .res)
- Velodyne (.vld, .rst, .pcap)
- Voxel (.csv)
- ZMAP (.dat, .grid, .zmap)
In addition to this, further plug-ins are added
- BandedContourFilter
- Foam2ImageFilter
- OBJFileExporter
- PDF3DExporter
- PLYFileExporter
