Full article is available for a fee
Rachael Dalton-Taggart, February 15, 2007
The recent rise of what we term ‘3D Publishing Tools’ had most
industry observers ticking off the days until the ‘CAD Viewing’
companies slipped gently into that good night. Indeed, out of the
traditional 3D CAD Viewing companies that we could immediately think of,
only Cimmetry (an Agile company) seems to have any life in it. Others --
Actify, Informative Graphics to name the top two -- went very quiet
during 2006, resulting in speculation about the future of what was 3D
CAD viewing.
Early 2007, though, has seen a comeback in public activity for 3D CAD
Viewer vendors, who are starting to reach out with press releases,
product upgrade announcements and more. There is an idea that there just
might be life in CAD Viewers yet, although they are undergoing a fairly
radical update to compete with newcomers to 3D Viewing and Publishing
that include Adobe, Lattice, Seemage, Quadrispace and more.
3D CAD Viewing versus 3D Publishing?
We need to be fairly clear about the differences, even though
delineating lines between these two markets are blurring rapidly:
At CADCAMNet we define 3D CAD Viewing as the ability to view, review
and possibly redline/markup a 3D CAD model without needing the
underlying CAD system installed. And with that definition, there are a
bewildering array of products available to achieve this.
(Click for larger view)
3D Publishing, however, is the ability to not just view the 3D CAD
model without the underlying CAD system, but to also somehow repurpose
the data—typically for technical documentation, instruction manuals,
IETMs (Interactive Electronic Training Manuals), rapid manufacturing/3D
Printing, etc. This market also has a baffling array of product choices.
For this article we are looking primarily at where pure 3D CAD
Viewers are, and what the future holds. But we can’t mention them
without confusing matters with the 3D Publishers -- who also do 3D CAD
Viewing.
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