With the long-anticipated release of Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat 3D product, manufacturers such as Bradrock Industries (Des Plaines, IL) will be able to more easily collaborate with customers and partners and won't need to worry that intellectual property contained in CAD documents will be misused, says Nick Butkovich, IT manager at the tool and mold maker.
"Collaboration is the biggest benefit [of Acrobat 3D]," says Butkovich, who was a beta tester of the product prior to its official release in January. "It saves time when we are trying to design something, because not everyone has to have the same CAD software to work with a drawing."
Acrobat 3D, an extension of Adobe's Acrobat 7.0 Professional product, automatically translates CAD files generated by CAD programs into Adobe's widely used PDF format. Acrobat 3D uses the OpenGL standard to translate files from native CAD formats to PDF, although some CAD vendors -- including SolidWorks Corp. (Concord, MA) and UGS Corp. (Plano, TX) -- have licensed Adobe's PDF libraries and say they plan to allow their tools to generate PDF files natively.
Once in the PDF format, CAD files can be viewed by Adobe's free Reader software. Adobe officials estimate that users have downloaded 1.25 billion copies of the Adobe Reader onto their desktop systems. (Users need Reader version 7.07 or later to work with Acrobat 3D files.)
It's the ubiquity of the Adobe Reader that stimulates IT managers' interest in Acrobat 3D, Butkovich says. Bradrock often wants to distribute CAD files to multiple engineers within the company or to customers and contractors outside for quality-control review. But Bradrock can never be sure whether users to whom files are sent have the specific CAD software needed to see them. Even within Bradrock, two CAD programs -- SolidWorks and AutoCAD from Autodesk Inc. (San Rafael, CA) -- are used. In the past that meant Butkovich had to go through multi-step processes in order to get the CAD file to be sent in the right format.
Using Acrobat 3D and the PDF format alleviates all that manual translation effort, Butkovich explains.
Acrobat 3D also allows users to manipulate CAD files, highlighting pieces of an assembly, for example, or marking a specific view. Users can also create cross-sections. And a policy server feature allows users to place restrictions on how a 3D file may be used. Design owners, for example, can designate the file as read-only or have it self-delete after 10 days.
That, Butkovich said, will make Bradrock more comfortable with the idea of sending 3D intellectual content to contractors, some of whom in the past have surreptitiously passed it on to manufacturers in China or elsewhere.
Acrobat 3D is likely to stimulate the widespread use of 3D files by engineers and non-engineers, says Ed Miller, president of consulting firm CIMdata Inc. But, cautioned John MacKrell, a senior consultant at CIMdata, potential customers should be aware of possible limitations in the initial version of Acrobat 3D. It's not clear,
MacKrell said, that Acrobat 3D will be able to work well with very large CAD files. And, because of limitations in the OpenGL standard, not all data associated with CAD files may be carried over into the PDF format.
Acrobat 3D carries a recommended price of $995, although the company will upgrade current users of Acrobat 7.0 Professional and Acrobat 6.0 Professional for $545 and $699, respectively.
This article originally appeared in the March 2006 issue of Managing Automation magazine.