Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Tetra 4D's product installs a plug-in for Acrobat X Pro, so yes you do need Acrobat X Pro.  Share3D from Quadrispace runs without Acrobat. 

You will need Acrobat Pro to 'Save As > Reader Extended PDF' to enable commenting and markup tools in the free Reader. Else your 3D PDF will only be viewable in the Reader, i.e., no collaboration, interrogation or markup tools will be accessible. And if you build PDF forms that include 3D data, your Reader users will not be able to save their form field data.

Some of the reasons for the cost differences are:

1) Tetra 4D 3D PDF Converter requires Acrobat Pro

2) Tetra 4D 3D PDF Converter includes support for all the major CAD formats like CATIA, ProE, Ungiraphics and neutral formats like JT. If you add Share3D's Granite license to add the ability to import these formats, the costs are comparable but then you don't have Acrobat Pro. 

Also it looks like Share3D is publishing to PDF using the U3D format internally which has some serious limitations compared to PRC. Tetra 4D's 3D PDF Converter can publish to either U3D or PRC. By using the PRC format for internal format storage, 3D PDF Converter can generate PDFs with exact B-Rep geometry. It also supports writing to neutral formats and if you have B-Rep data on the way in, you can generate B-Rep data on the way out.

Acrobat Pro gives you a lot of 2d document support and collaboration tools and supports high fidelity 2D DWG to PDF conversion.

[#2]

Inventor Publisher will create 3D PDF's. Wish they put that capability into Inventor itself.

[#3]

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jeanchile wrote:

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I wish we could get our clients to use DWF's instead. I attempted to get one of my contacts to learn it and he said the measuring tools were so frustrating in Design Review that he gave up on it. Same old reasons, same old argument (IT, ease of use, another application, more training, blah, blah, blah).

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Design review is too complex for my in house sales people, nevermind my customers.

I'm not going to ask my customers to alter their IT policies for Autodesk sake.

[#4]

I just have to add my 2 cents here... Design Review is a poor product compared to eDrawings, in my opinion, for one reason: The measuring tools; absolutely horrendous. If Autodesk can fix that...

BTW, a much better PDF reader than Adobe is SumatraPDF (it launches quicker, renders better, can update/refresh a PDF if it changes in the background, is smaller [4 MB vs 36 MB] and it even reads DWFx, XPS and DejaVu files too). See image below of an DWFx opened with SumatraPDF. Unfortunately, SumatraPDF only reads 2D, but I normally just create a bunch of 3D views and 95% of clients are happy with that.

[#5]

So how is everyone converting 3d dwg's to 3d pdf's?  There is no dwg file option in Tetra4d.  We convert the models to 3ds first.  We lose all of the property data of the models doing it this way. The ability to open 3d dwg models in Acrobat and create 3d pdf's would be great

[#6]

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BigAl70454 wrote:

So how is everyone converting 3d dwg's to 3d pdf's?

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You don't.. People want to convert ipt or iam files to 3d pdf's (ultimately that you could then embed in a idw or dwg file then PDF the whole thing to have a typical 2d drawing with an embedded 3d model off to the side that you could zoom/rotate,etc...)

To convert a dwg or idw file to PDF (not 3Dpdf) you simply export to PDF or use a pdf type printer. (Comes with full acrobat) or the free cutepdf or others like that.

[#7]

True, most Inventor users are not doing this.  But, it would be great if we could produce 3d PDF's directly from Inventor.  Just about every computer on the planet can read a pdf. It would be so helpful for me to be able to send a 3d PDF file to my customers and say ... "here, take a look at this".

[#8]

I open inventor models in solidworks
and make a saveas 3d- PDF.

Other wise its too hard.

[#9]

It reminds me of the video tape wars of yore.  Yes, dwf might be technically superior (betamax), but the market has already decided (pdf / vhs).

[#10]

Nothing wrong with PDFs "IF" you use Adobe Acrobat X Pro to create them with and have it set up to maximize the quality. I found that these other PDF creators are a bit iffy when it comes to quality of end file and have less or sometimes no options to change quality of the image, one by Scan Soft actaually cut the output image to a quter of the original page, only part of the actuall sheet was produced.

Often third party converters are a version or more behind the current Adobe PDF version.

Printed output is also different on my two printers a cheap Epson D92 and A Cannon Pixma IX4000 give totally diferent results, quite passable for the classromm off the D92 but the IX4000 is best for customer etc.

As for screen display I have my settings up at 300DPI set this In the Edit - Preferances - Page Display set the custom DPI to about 300 or above.