Adobe Solutions for Manufacturing

I’m happy to announce that we have just posted the Acrobat Pro Extended 3D update in North America.  The rest of the geographies will follow very shortly.  This 3D update contains support for recent versions of CAD file formats and bug fixes for 3D specific features in Acrobat Pro Extended and 3D Reviewer.

Click "more" below to read about the changes and how to get it... free of course.

Adobe has just made the update available via its web site www.adobe.com  a free download that delivers updated 3D CAD translators for Acrobat 9 Pro Extended.  As a result, the product now supports the latest version of many of the major 3D CAD file formats.

New Supported CAD format versions with this update:

CAD Format	Supported Versions
Dassault Catia V5	Up to R19
Autodesk Inventor	Up to 12.x and 2009
CoCreate OneSpace Designer	V3 to V2008
Siemens NX	Up to NX 6
Siemens Parasolid	Up to 19

 

The product update, and additional information, is available from the Adobe web site here.

Please note these same 3D CAD translators are being updated simultaneously in Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator 3D ES.

 

Posted by Doug Halliday at 7:02 PM | Permalink

This is the third in a series about batch conversion of 3D files.  I explained in previous articles how Adobe’s Livecycle PDF Generator 3D Enterprise Suite is helping enterprise customers automate the production of 3D PDFs.  In the first entry I gave an example of a 3D PDF and described, at a high level, how it works.  In the second entry discussed ways customers are using PDF G3D, from simple to the most complex options available.  In this entry, I will build upon the previous two entries to discuss supplier collaboration workflows and how customers are streamlining operations with 3D PDFs. Click “more” to read on.

Supplier Collaboration

Manufacturers are frequently forced to choose between ineffective low end “store and forward” solutions and complex and expensive direct integration of suppliers into the originator’s PLM environment.  Here is a model of the typical options:

 

 

Figure 1. Typical Supplier Data Sharing Options

Figure 1 shows the evolution of collaboration. Virtually all companies start with data exchange – the unidirectional “push” of information to partner companies.  While this model solves certain short term business needs, such as enabling suppliers to manufacture parts to OEM requirements.  This model has some inherent weaknesses, largely because it operates outside of the systems that were designed to manage this data.  There are lots of stories about suppliers developing tooling to the wrong designs. Worse, once a design is “pushed” outside of the originators environment, there is little hope of protecting intellectual property… at least until recently – more on that later.

The next step in the evolution is data sharing, where organizations strive to “connect” suppliers to their environments.  This phase solves a number of problems for the OEM originator, but it is expensive and troublesome for downstream users who are forced to adopt complex, expensive solutions.  Suppliers are burdened with complying with all of their customers’ systems, protocols and formats.  The tier one suppliers have it particularly hard, because they have to manage the issues both up and downstream.

 

Adobe’s Livecycle PDF Generator 3D and Rights Management work together to solve many of the issues inherent in both of these options.  Phase three is “portable collaboration”.  This phase relies upon effective use of both ad-hoc and structured workflows where each makes sense.  These need to be very people-friendly and easily adopted across the supply change.  The major difference here is that rather than expensive direct connection or even VPN’s, the interfaces are portable. 

 

 

Figure 2. Portable Collaboration

So how would this work? Well let me show you.  Here is a picture we developed to show how some companies are moving to “portable collaboration”:

 

Figure 3.  Automated conversion for supply-chain collaboration

Here is how it can work:

1. First the CAD Designer checks out a CAD file and makes changes.
2. Then the designer checks the file back in and up-revs the item.
3. A change is detected and the file is routed for conversion to 3D PDF using an available template for a “release” workflow.
4. Additional information is added to the PDF by Livecycle PDF Generator and the PDF is extended for collaboration and analysis in the Adobe Reader.
5. Next, policy is applied by Adobe’s Rights Management solution… the previous version will be automatically revoked and supplier engineers who are authorized to work with the files download the newly revisioned data. This ensures they will still working within the context of the evolving design.
6. The PDM is returned to the PLM system and associated with the CAD file.
7.  Then the PDF is published to a shared portal for supplier access.
8. The supplier engineer downloads the file.
9. The engineer then opens the file. 
10. When the engineer opens the file using the free Reader, the PDF “calls home” to the Rights Management server (this is the same process that was used to revoke the “old” version of the data). 
11. The engineer now begins to work with the PDF in accordance with the policy which grants rights and privileges. 

 

So that is one way automated conversion of CAD files is helping customers improve time to market and reduce costs of integrating their supply chain for effective product development. Portable Collaboration can help by reducing the need to directly connect many suppliers while still ensuring they are working with correct data. 

 

 

Posted by Doug Halliday at 11:50 AM | Permalink

This is a follow on to a recent article about batch conversion of 3D files.  I explained in the previous article Adobe’s Livecycle PDF Generator 3D Enterprise Suite, which was released in July, is helping enterprise customers automate the production of 3D PDFs.  Last time we gave an example of a 3D PDF and described, at a high level, how it works.  In this entry, I will dig more deeply into ways customers are using PDF G3D, from simple to the most complex options available.  Read on to learn more about Livecycle PDF Generator 3D.

Available Options

Customers require flexibility in how they make product development information available across and beyond the enterprise.  For example, almost all customers rely on 3D information for design collaboration and approvals.  By generating simple 3D PDF, product design information is shared with non-CAD users across the company, with suppliers and customers by simply relying upon the Adobe Reader.  It is not necessary to provide CAD or visualization applications to everyone.  In these cases, starting with a one-page PDF, Reader Extending it for analysis, review and commenting is all that may be necessary.  Of course, other 2D and 3D information might be combined into a single PDF. 

Here is what a design review workflow might look like with PDF Generator 3D installed:

Figure 1   Design Review Workflow (Both Daily Batch or On-Demand Operation in Place)

And here is an example “simple PDF” open in Reader during a design review:

Figure 2 Simple PDF Being Used in a Review and Comment Cycle

Of course there are other use cases that require more complex templates. In this case, a template is a PDF with a 3D window, but there can be much more.  In the previous article we showed an example of a PDF with feeds from multiple sources and JavaScript-based forms interaction with the 3D annotation.  While it would be possible to create complex PDFs like that one using Acrobat Pro Extended, perhaps starting with simple PDFs that are created automatically, many customers will create a template with all of the capability in place, and then “up-rev” it when related source data changes. (There are a number of ways the workflows can be orchestrated based upon Livecycle's SOA architecture.) 

 

 

Figure 3  PDF with XML Feed, Forms Data Collection and JavaScript-Based 3D Interaction

I have just book ended the types of PDFs that can be produced with PDF G3D.  There of course is a range of complexity in between.  To explain what is possible, we have introduced this model to explain the range of 3D functionality:  

 

 

Figure 4  Range of PDF Generator 3D Functionality

Like all of Adobe’s Livecycle data document services, we have designed Livecycle PDF Generator 3D ES to provide a wide range of implementation options.  In this article I have explained some of the levels of functionality that are possible.  I have hinted at some of the implementation options, but we will have to explore some of those options in future articles.  The next thing to concentrate on is the kinds of processes we have designed PDF G3D to support.  To get you thinking about areas where you could be reducing cost, improving quality and speeding time to market, here is a list of some of the process areas we will dive into in the future:

• Merging 3D data and non-CAD documents
• Workflows requiring data capture in XML forms
• Control of sensitive data beyond the firewall
• Long term archival
• Supply chain collaboration
• Marketing Collateral Publishing & Distribution
• Publishing & distribution of technical documents
• Shared reviews beyond the firewall
• Design approval by non-engineers
• Real-time collaboration beyond the firewall

Next time I will show some examples of these and demonstrate how PDF Generator 3D ES and the Livecycle Suite can help you.

Posted by Doug Halliday at 6:39 PM | Permalink