Acrobat 9 builds massively on 3D for engineering design and development
1 min read
Manufacturers that have witnessed the magic of Adobe Acrobat 3D are in for a pleasant surprise – Acrobat 9, with new support for Flash, PDF portfolios and real-time capabilities for collaboration using universal live PDFs.
Rak Bhalla, senior marketing manager for Adobe’s manufacturing vertical, says it’s a major release, enabling users, for example, to include Flash Player-compatible video and application files in PDFs, with recipients viewing the results using free Adobe Reader 9 software.
Just as valuable, users can now unify content, such as documents, video, audio and 3D CAD objects – all into a single, compressed document, using PDF Portfolios.
“What was Acrobat 3D is now Acrobat 9 Pro Extended – the premium product in the family,” explains Bhalla. “There’s a new 3D reviewer, using technology we got when we purchased Trade & Technologies. There’s also Adobe Presenter that lets you create on-demand presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint.
“Also, engineers can export stereolithograpy files direct from a 3D PDF to 3D printers. They can embed 3D design data, with Exel, PowerPoint or Word documents, so they can navigate it inside the Acrobat environment… And with the 3D reviewer, for first time, users will be able to merge all CAD formats into one assembly.
“But most important, by marrying PDFs with Flash, users can share documents and images, with any type of video content, right inside a PDF. So there’s no more need for special Codecs any more.”
This is Adobe’s answer to collaboration: shared document review, live within a PDF document and – most important – supported by hosted services at Acrobat.com, now released as a public beta. Adobe sees the site as key – expecting it to be used for everything from storing and sharing files, to a central repository for collecting data as part of a forms process.
“Engineering folks will like the hosted service, which will be free to everyone so that all people can collaborate with their documents in real time – also with personal web conferencing for up to three people, also for free,” enthuses Bhalla.
That’s the Adobe ConnectNow service, and for the record, it supports desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing, and integrated chat – as well as Adobe’s web-based word processor Buzzword for document comment and review.
