Adobe Acrobat 3D review

By Rafiq Elmansy (admin)   |   September 18, 2007   |   Posted in Reviews   |   No Comments  

It has been a problem to send or present 3D works to the client. As you need to make sure that your client has the viewer or finds the way to open it. Now with the new Acrobat family member, Adobe Acrobat 3D, you can make sure that your client do not need to install any 3D VRML viewers or other software to review the 3D works. All you need is to have Adobe Acrobat reader installed to your client machine.

I think Adobe Acrobat 3D is a great tool for presenting products made with 3D or CAD programs such as mechanical equipments; also it is useful for educational purposes for viewing education material in 3D space.

Adobe Acrobat 3D lets you easily capture your 3D models and add it to your PDF files, and it gives you comprehensive set of tools that enable your client from controlling the view of your 3D object like any other 3D viewers such as controlling the view of your object, the lighting options, the render mode, the background color, as well as the ability to view a cross section of your model, viewing its dimensions and view the model tree, where you can view each of the model parts.

Figure1. 3D object embedded to PDF file

Figure2. The 3D view option tool bar

Adobe Acrobat 3d gives you the capabilities to reduce your 3D file to easily share with clients partners using the Reduce File Size from the File menu. In addition to that, Adobe Acrobat 3D enable you and your clients to add comments and notes to the PDF files using a the Comment menu, which include number of feature to manage comments like adding notes, drawing markups, replying comments, importing comment, exporting comment and sending for reviewing feature.

Figure3. The comments feature in Adobe Acrobat 3D

In addition to the 3D feature, Adobe Acrobat 3D include the feature of Adobe Acrobat Professional such as securing and digital signing.
Adobe Acrobat 3D enable you to send your PDFs either through email or upload for browser based review.

Also, Adobe Acrobat 3D comes with another Adobe product, it is Adobe Designer, which allow you to create forms to be sent by email for client to fill and the results are sent back to your email address.

The Adobe Acrobat 3D is a new product from Adobe and I think it is a must-have product for all professionals who work in the 3D and CAD products for easing the delivery and the review process for their products. However, I think 995$ for getting a new version and 545$ for upgrade is little expensive.
Finally, Adobe site includes all the information you need to know to get start with this product at the following link:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat3d/

Tags: How-to