The 3D Pub

Here are a few example 3D PDF files that were created while putting together the Share3D PDF overview video. If you haven’t seen the video, here it is. (Scroll down to download 3D PDF’s).

The examples show the model at different stages of creation and using a few different templates. There are more than 50 templates included, so the template choice is up to you.

All examples below can be viewed with Adobe Reader 9 or X and there are no plug-ins to download and install. This makes it easy to share these 3D PDF files with anyone since Adobe Reader is installed on most computers.

Example 3D PDF #1

Look For: custom views, custom text, simple template, Reader bookmarks

In the video, the first published PDF includes 4 user created illustrations (user views), a custom title, custom text and a custom logo. The template choice is “Rectangled” and includes a couple easy buttons for navigating through the user created illustrations. In Adobe Reader, make sure to open the bookmarks so that you can see how recipients can easily use the bookmarks to select a custom view of the 3D model.

Download Share3D_PDF_1.pdf

Example 3D PDF #2

Look for: Exploded view, material library, clickable list, Reader model tree

This PDF adds an exploded view and modifies a material in the 3D scene. This also demonstrates the use of a different template, “Rounded”. The template has a clickable list on the right side that allows Adobe Reader users to click a user create illustration by name to display it in the 3D view. You might also take a look at the model tree which is an integrated part of Adobe Reader. The model tree allows you to select and hide parts from the 3D model by name. Share3D PDF publishes 3D models to PDF files so that this information is available.

Download Share3D_PDF_2.pdf

Example 3D PDF #3

Look for: custom names and descriptions, custom theme selection, dynamic display of names in Reader

The last 3D PDF published in the video includes custom names and descriptions for the user created illustrations. Notice that when viewing with Adobe Reader, these names and description are displayed dynamically on the document page as differnt user created illustrations are selected for display. The template used in this example is “Bound Flag”.

Download Share3D_PDF_3.pdf

Please comment below and let us know what you think!

Just a quick note to let our blog readers know that our new entry product for creating 3D PDF files from 3D models has been released.

For just $99, Share3D PDF users can leverage the following

• Import 3D files such as SolidWorks, Inventor, Rhino, SketchUp, and much more
• Rapidly capture 3D views and recall them with PDF bookmarks
• Preview and publish to more than 50 high-impact templates
• Click to easily customize text, images, logos and colors
• Many templates include interactive buttons and clickable lists
• Assign names and descriptions to captured views that will display in the PDF
• Share 3D with anyone that has Adobe(R) Reader 9+

For a more detailed discussion and a free trial, check out the website: http://www.share3d.com.

Explore how Publisher3D(TM) 2011 can publish an instruction set directly to Word(R). In this blog post, we will start from the previous example where we created an animation of our assembly process for a power supply. If you would like to review this example, you can check out these blog posts:

How to Create an Assembly Animation with Publisher3D

Smart Template Technology

These two posts show how we created a storyboard of assembly illustrations very quickly. We published an animation from the illustrations. In this post, we will build on this foundation by doing two things that will lead us to a compete Word document with images and textual descriptions of each step of the assembly process.

Give “Good” Titles to Each Illustration

When Smart Template Technology was used to create the illustrations, each illustration was given a unique name. This works fine for animations where the title of the illustration does not matter. However, when we publish to Word, this title will be used as the title for each image published. So, our first step is to change these names.

To change the names, we can bring up the storyboard then right click each illustration’s thumbnail image and choose “Illustration Properties…”. This will allow us to enter a new name.

Add descriptive information to each illustration as metadata

The next step is to document each illustration by adding textual information to the illustrations. To do this we will need to bring up the Metadata Panel and then use this to enter a “Description” field for each illustration. I typed in some simple instructions for each here, in a real document this might be multiple paragraphs of information.

Give a “Good” name to the Storyboard

The Storyboard name will end up as the title of our Word document, so we need to open the Project Panel, right click the storyboard and set a good name.

Publish to Word

Now it is time to publish our document. From the Publish ribbon we can select “Microsoft(R) Word(R)” as the output, select storyboard as the source and click “Publish Now”. I modified result to have two columns and then uploaded.

Here is a link to the resulting doc file.

One of the hot topics of the day led me to this quick example of a ticket selection document. I know it won’t answer the questions burning in Texas, “Mark Cuban or Nolan Ryan” but it could help you buy the best seats once you know which new owner you will be purchasing them from.

Using this document end users could click on various buttons to turn on and off a map overlay that uses QuadriSpace’s “3D Markup” capability. With a little more work ticket sections could be selected and display pricing information and links to the actual store for ticket purchasing.

I download the Rangers Stadium model from Google Warehouse here and then imported this SketchUp file directly into Pages3D. From there the steps to create this document were straight forward… add the background shapes, add the images (map, Nolan Ryan and Mark Cuban), use the mouse to position the view and then capture 3 illustrations. For one of the illustrations we added a 3D markup so the map could be overlayed like this:

The final step was to create the buttons: ON which turns the map on, OFF which turns it off and HOME which repositions the camera to a default position.

This took about 10 minutes to create. Here is a movie of the document in action…

Smart Template Technology (STT) is a very important technology for QuadriSpace users and provides an incredible jump start to many historically tedious documentation tasks. This blog post will provide a short overview of this important technology so that you can use it on your next project. Although this was introduce in our 2009 version with Service Pack 2, many customers are still unaware of the power of this important capability.

Smart Template Technology is the key to 15 minutes animations, like this! Without STT, after creating an exploded view, each view would have to be created manually.

In the previous example, we created an animation of an assembly process. The user steps were to (1) create an exploded view, (2) setup a “template image” (3) use the Storyboard Wizard (based on STT) to generate views and (4) tweak the resulting views. To most users, the unknown part of this is step (3) which automatically creates views. How does this work?

Smart Template Technology - Click to zoom

So, as a user of Publisher3D or Pages3D, there are a few things that you should seek to accomplish at each step diagrammed above.

(Estimated time in animation example – 7 minutes)

Creating an exploded view is the first step. The strategy here is to create an exploded view that has steps in the correct order. If you are creating an assembly process, then the steps can be in the opposite order because there  is an option to “Reverse Steps” during when using the Storyboard Wizard. You can review and adjust the order of the steps by using the “Exploded View Panel” (shown in the graphic above).

Another thing to consider here is that you can allow parts to overlap physically. There is a Storyboard Wizard option to hide the parts until they are needed. This can result in better generated images. In standard exploded views, parts can be significantly distant because other parts are in between. In animation (especially an assemble process) animation, all of the parts may never be visible together in an exploded state.

(Estimated time in animation example – 3 minutes)

An image template is really just a fancy way of saying set up the view in Publisher3D. After you create the exploded view, it is important to get the view set up the way you want it BEFORE running the Storyboard Wizard. This is because the settings that you make to the view will propagate through all illustrations that are created. This includes setting a viewpoint, the desired render style, a ground plane, shadows, reflections and any other view property that you want all generated illustrations to have. Keep in mind that this can be tweaked after the illustrations are generated too.

(Estimate time in animation example – 1 minute)

This is a simple step. Simply activate the “Storyboard Wizard” command and STT will do most of the rest for you. There are a few options that you can select during the wizard that will determine the results you get. For example, when we created the assembly process, we made sure to select the “Reverse Steps” option so that our automatically created illustrations would end up in the correct order.

(Estimated time in animation example – 4 minutes)

This is the result. After this is created, you are free to modify each individual illustration, change the transitions between illustrations (for assembly I like “Accel 2 Reverse”), change viewpoints, change render styles per illustration, add markups, add meta data to each illustration, etc.

There are many things that can be done with a storyboard in QuadriSpace products. The example so far just shows a simple and rapidly created animation that was published as an AVI for uploading to YouTube.

What’s Next?

In a blog soon, I will expand on this Power Supply project to (1) add metadata to each illustration and publish a set of images to Word and then (2) begin working with this storyboard in Pages3D to show how the storyboard can be reused to create interactive 3D documents or rapidly add images to pages in a document.

Thanks for visiting the QuadriSpace blog. There are a wide range of topics that we plan to cover over the next months and years, so join the QuadriSpace Twitter feed and keep up to date with what’s going on with QuadriSpace, our products and product documentation in general. We will help you come up with the best practices and strategies for reusing your 3D models to create everything from work instructions to technical illustrations, from illustrated parts lists to 3D PDF documents. Keep with us and you will be able to expand the use of 3D for everything!

Here are some topics we will be covering, feel free to let me know what you’d like to see from us too.

• Project Demos — I already have the first one in mind for this (and it has to do with what we will be doing and SWW 2010 this year too, sneak peak)
• Quick Tips — There are tons of features and capabilities, so we’ll have real QuadriSpace guru’s proving user tips weekly.
• Customer Success Stories — We have notes on many accounts and haven’t found the time to get this into formal documents, I think we can get blog entries going quickly.
• Discussions on Applications of 3D product documentation — from the professional to the entertaining, we’ll cover all kinds of uses.
• Competitive Comparisons — The differences between our products and our competitor’s is huge. We will clearly communicate these differences and point out how our products save more time, cost less and provide the best results. This is a big picture difference, we’ll help everyone see the light.
• Industry Insight— The 3D product documentation market is taking off; we’ve been focused on this market since 2001 so we will have plenty of things to say about the trends and direction.

That’s just a quick list. I’m sure there’s more.

Thanks for keeping up with us.

Brian Roberts