3D package gains lightweight export option

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 4, 2005

CoCreate Software and Lattice3D have signed an agreement that will make Lattice3D's XVL publishing technology available within CoCreate's 3D CAD product, OneSpace Designer Modeling.

CoCreate Software and Lattice3D have signed an agreement that will make Lattice3D's XVL publishing technology available within CoCreate's 3D CAD product, OneSpace Designer Modeling.

The partnership advances CoCreate's strategy of offering its customers multiple formats to choose from for lightweight viewing and collaboration around 3D CAD designs.

Lattice3D's highly compressed XVL format becomes part of a growing list of lightweight viewing formats that can be easily published from directly within Designer Modeling.

Lightweight formats, like the Lattice3D technology, offer an easy way for manufacturers to interact with their designers and extend the reach of 3D CAD design data within the organisation without requiring users to have CAD expertise.

For example, manufacturing, procurement, technical illustration, sales, marketing and customer support can each interact with 3D CAD designs to provide their expertise in design reviews or use 3D data in their own activities and deliverables.

"CoCreate customers work in multiple industries, each with its own preferred viewing format", said William M Gascoigne, CoCreate CEO.

"Lightweight viewers have become especially important as so many designers now work with teams that may include several internal departments and external partners - many of whom may not have compatible CAD systems, or even CAD expertise".

"XVL breaks the mould with a technology shift", says Ken Versprille, PhD, PLM Research Director, CPD Associates.

"Rather than rely on representing product graphics in a tessellated form of planar triangles, XVL uses a higher mathematical surface form allowing for impressive data compression".

"Less data drives faster data transfer and faster data transfer drives expanded use of that data for collaborating design teams and downstream users of product data".

CoCreate will release the Lattice3D viewing component as an XVL convertor module for Designer Modeling through a service pack to Designer Modeling later this year.

The addon module will be available for purchase at that time through CoCreate resellers and account executives.

With the module, Designer Modeling users can export their 3D CAD designs to XVL, a popular, lightweight 3D graphics format.

These smaller 3D files (typically compressed to around 2% the size of the original model) can then be easily shared via e-mail.

Recipients use a free XVL Player, a small downloadable plug-in for both Internet Explorer and Netscape, to view the file.

"Lightweight viewing strengthens collaboration during the design process by bringing knowledge from all parts of the organisation into a product's development", said Alex Garcia-Tobar CEO, Lattice3D.

"With Lattice3D's XVL format companies also achieve productivity gains from the re-use of 3D CAD design data in downstream activities across every part of a product's lifecycle, resulting in cycle time and cost reductions as well as quality improvements and a better customer experience".

"The world is not a homogeneous place", said Gascoigne.

"People must work today with others who have different technologies, different interests, and different needs".

"Our goal is to provide a best-in-class CAD solution, while accommodating different standards and technologies in industry".

"We started by making it easy to import and export data from major CAD systems into Designer Modeling".

"The popular XVL format and other lightweight viewing formats extend the reach of Designer Modeling data to non-CAD users in downstream processes, to partners and to suppliers".

Additional capabilities to re-use and share 3D data assets across the enterprise (in ultra-compressed XVL format) are available via Lattice3D applications from Lattice3D resellers and OEMs.

These capabilities include 3D part catalogue systems, 3D training animations, 3D QA applications, 3D technical manuals and even 3D websites.