I would like to welcome Chris French the AEC Product Manager who was kind enough to submit a blog entry that is going to tell us all about Acrobat 9 and its exciting new features. Chris French writes:
It's the result of several long months of hard work and I'm excited to finally be able to talk publicly about it. Acrobat 9 was announced this morning and it has a lot in it for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction professionals.
Before I call out some specific functionality, let me say that if you thought there was a lot in the Acrobat box before, you'll be amazed at what's in there now. This is the first chance we've had to put Flash and PDF together. Think about how much more dynamic the web became with Flash. Now you can include video and fully functional Flash applications in your PDFs. We've also made it easy to work with some of the just announced Acrobat.com features helping you work better with remote colleagues. And we've tuned up several of the major feature areas in Acrobat 8.
Here are answers to some general questions about the new release:
What does Flash do for me?
It changes the whole PDF experience. Big words, but it's true. Think about assembling documents for a new project proposal. With PDF Portfolios you can organize, brand, and customize the layout for a set of documents. Turn the PDF itself into a presentation of the material.
You can also embed video and audio directly into your PDF. Embed a video of you and your partners inside your corporate presentation. Capture field conditions with a video camcorder and send it around for comments inside a PDF. That's right, Adobe Reader 9 can now playback Flash and Video directly, so you don't have to worry whether everyone has the right software to see it. And, like in Acrobat 8, you can enable the file for review, which means you can point out specific conditions using the review and comment tools and allow others to also add comments with Adobe Reader 9. The comments are organized like other Acrobat markups and refer to the specific frame in the video where the comment was added.
Acrobat 9 Pro Extended also includes Adobe Presenter which makes it easy to add voiceovers to PowerPoint slides for creating self running safety and training lessons. You can add interactive quizzes and video and they run beautifully inside of a PDF.
How about Acrobat.com?
Acrobat.com is a set of new hosted services that make it easier for you to connect and share with business partners over the internet. It was just announced in beta and is available through a standard web browser whether or not your are an Acrobat user. Acrobat 9 makes it easy to access some of the services to enable shared reviews, distribute and collect form responses, and collaborate live inside of a PDF document.
That last one is especially interesting when you're trying to have a phone discussion about a 3D model. By enabling a PDF document for live collaboration, you're allowing others who receive your document to connect and watch as you navigate the model. When you rotate, pan, zoom, etc, they see what you're seeing. They can get connected with Adobe Reader 9 and don't even need their own Acrobat.com account, just your document. It's simpler and faster than web conferencing, because all participants have the document, they're just sharing page commands. It's difficult to describe, but compelling. It's one of the areas we've heard AEC participants in our pre-release program tell us is especially innovative.
What has been improved from Acrobat 8?
A lot. One of my favorites is that both Acrobat and Reader just launch faster. I'm also excited about the new support for conversion of IFC files to 3D PDFs. Now it's much easier to create and share intelligent 3D models complete with IFC object data regardless of which BIM application you or your design partners use.
Some of the other enhancement areas that are interesting to AEC customers are shared reviews, the PDFMaker for AutoCAD and forms. Of those, I'm most impressed with the enhancements to forms creation, distribution, and data collection. Now it's much easier for the project manager or project controls professional to enable common contract communication with PDF forms that can be filled in an submitted with Reader. New wizards make it easy to understand and the functionality has been made available throughout the Acrobat family.
If you're already an Acrobat fan or just thinking about looking closer, Acrobat 9 has a lot to offer.
Enjoy!!
Chris French
Acrobat Product Manager
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