Acrobat 3D

You could be forgiven for wondering why you need a 3D version of Acrobat. After all, Acrobat has been able to embed live 3D graphics into the PDF format for a while now. However, previously it’s only been able to use the Universal 3D (U3D) format. Now, with the introduction of Acrobat 3D, Adobe has upgraded this 3D support dramatically.

Adobe Acrobat 3D enables you to convert many professional 3D data formats into PDF documents for viewing and navigating in virtual 3D space using the free Adobe Reader 7. 3D formats such as 3DS, 3DM, DXF, VRML, DGN, OBJ, IGES and MAX are converted directly by dragging and dropping them into Acrobat.

Certain other formats, such as AutoCAD, Revit and SketchUp, are only supported via a separate utility, but Acrobat 3D includes a clever feature that lets you to capture any 3D file shown on-screen using OpenGL. You can also import models into Microsoft Office documents before conversion, so you can produce complete PDF documents that contain text and layout in addition to the 3D graphics. There’s also a toolkit for customising lights, materials and textures, and adding animation.

But the pumped-up 3D support still feels incomplete. Non-graphical information is lost when embedding a model into a PDF, and you can’t constrain the Rotate tool to a selected plane. It’s not cheap either, coming in at almost double the price of the standard Acrobat 7.

However, if these issues were addressed, and the price lowered, Acrobat 3D could revolutionise 3D design collaboration and engineering documentation overnight.