The first step is to customize a 3D PDF template according to industry or company standards. It's very similar to customizing 2D drawing templates. In a 3D PDF template, you can insert as many 3D independent viewports as needed. These viewports are placeholders in a template and will be populated with specific views of your choosing later.

A thoughtful practice adopted by some manufacturers is to place multiple viewports on an early sheet to provide an upfront overview for data consumers, as shown in Figure 1. This way, anyone looking at the first page can quickly and easily obtain a rough idea of the design from multiple perspectives without having to flip a model back and forth repeatedly in one viewport.

Figure 1. Present multiple views on one page as a quick overview.

On the other hand, some regulations may require the first page of a technical document to declare certain statements such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). In this case, the first page may not be allowed to show any viewports or technical information. You can now customize the first page so that it doesn't include any viewports using the MBD 2017 release as illustrated in this article, “What's New in SOLIDWORKS 2017: 3D PDF Template Editor.”

After the first several sheets, some companies recommend placing one big viewport per sheet to make a document friendlier to printers as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Present one big viewport per sheet for easier printing and viewing on paper.

This is a very practical consideration because MBD doesn't necessarily mean paperless processes, as explained in this blog post. Oftentimes, hard copies are still necessary and this template layout strategy can help ease downstream data consumption tremendously.

With a professional and practical template, we can now move on to the 3D PDF publishing step. One recommended practice here is to capture well-thought-out and organized 3D views before publishing. 3D views are very comprehensive and capable of representing a wide range of viewing factors, such as orientations, configurations, display states, annotation views, zooming scales and so on. These factors will also closely align with design expectations in a published 3D PDF. As a comparison, in my experience,predefined views or the current model view (circled in the red box in Figure 3) don’t behave as predictably as 3D views.

Figure 3. 3D views are recommended over predefined views and the current model view.

As suggested at the bottom in Figure 3, 3D views don't have to capture models. They can also be used to capture 2D content such as bill-of-materials (BOM) tables, notes and statements. These elements can all be populated in independent viewports in a published 3D PDF. It's also possible to take it one step further and assign these 2D elements to an annotated view in the 2D notes area so that they won't rotate and will always stay flat to the screen for easier reading in both SOLIDWORKS and Adobe Reader. This article, “How to Present the MBD Data of a Gear Box Assembly,” explained further the annotated view in the 2D notes area.

Once a 3D PDF is published, a very noticeable tool is the view strip, as shown at the bottom in Figure 1. You can quickly browse through these views by clicking on a thumbnail; the corresponding independent viewport will be updated per your selection, in the same fashion as the 3D view strip in SOLIDWORKS as shown at the bottom in Figure 3.

Furthermore, Adobe Reader provides many tools to present and manage views. Figure 4 shows several expanded settings, such as the View Selection drop-down box, the Model Render mode, the lighting options, the viewport background color and the cross-section properties.

Figure 4. Adobe Reader viewing tools.

These Adobe Reader settings are self-explanatory. You can try them out and check out the results visually right away, so we don't have to explain too much here. One point worth noting is the Illustration display mode as shown in Figure 4. Another mode is the Solid Outline display as shown in Figure 5. In many cases, engineers need to see the edge lines to best understand the boundaries of complex features, so these two modes are recommended for this need. As a comparison, Figure 6 showed the solid rendered mode where the edge lines are hidden, which doesn't look as sharp as the displays in Figure 4 or 5.

Figure 5. Solid Outline display mode in Adobe Reader.

Figure 6. Solid display mode without edge lines in Adobe Reader.

Another setting is the view selection drop-down box as shown at the upper-left corner in Figure 4. You can pick which view to populate to an independent viewport from this drop-down list. One neat MBD 3D PDF feature that many people aren't aware of is that once you populate a viewport with a specific view, you can actually save this selection back to a 3D PDF using Adobe Reader. A common perception is that Adobe Reader is just a viewer to display documents in read-only mode, but when it comes to the view selection, you can edit and save it. Whether you are scrolling up and down through multiple pages or reopening a 3D PDF, what you pick for the independent viewports will be remembered.

This provides greater flexibility in the view arrangement. For example, you can decide on the view presentation sequence even if you don't have SOLIDWORKS MBD on your computer or don't want to publish this 3D PDF again. It is especially handy when you want to print all the views in certain way from a 3D PDF inside Adobe Reader.

One last overlooked point is that when you add a 3D comment, Adobe Reader will automatically create a view as shown in Figure 7. So to retrieve a 3D comment, please remember to check the list of views on the left or in the drop-down box. Of course, you can save a 3D comment along with its view back to a 3D PDF using Adobe Reader.

Figure 7. 3D comments are saved as a separate view in Adobe Reader.

Now to learn more details about 3D PDF, please feel free to check out the video in this blog post, “How to Publish a 3D PDF with SOLIDWORKS MBD.”Another blog post video, “How to Use 3D PDFs,” will walk you through the basic tools available in Adobe Reader. Last but not least, you may also download several 3D PDF samples published by SOLIDWORKS MBD at this forum post. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its product page.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise and smart manufacturing.

In design communications, there are many technical documents needed besides the 3D models. As a result, the U.S. military standard MIL-STD-31000A:2013 proposed a term called a technical data package (TDP), which includes models, drawings, associated lists, specifications, standards, quality assurance provisions, software documentation, packaging details and so on, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The hierarchical breakdown of the data and possible documents in a TDP. (Image courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense.)

In order to build a TDP to comply with this military standard, manufacturers in the defense supply chain have been attaching documents to the 3D PDF file as a container using a wide variety of tools. The good news is that the free Adobe Reader supports adding attachments as comments as shared in this blog post, but the problem is that it only allows selecting one document per comment. In a TDP, there could be many documents to go into a package, so attaching them one by one could be tedious, time consuming and error prone.

Now in MBD 2017, you can select multiple files at the same time to attach to a 3D PDF on the publishing dialog as shown on the left in Figure 2. In the Adobe Reader window on the right, you may see the list of attachments inside a 3D PDF container.

Figure 2. Select multiple files to attach to a 3D PDF in the publishing dialog.

By the way, as shared in a previous article, “What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2017: MBD,” you can also check the box “Create and attach STEP 242” at the lower-left corner of Figure 2. STEP 242 is a neutral format published as the ISO 10303-242:2014 standard, which paid special attention to supporting 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI). So this new checkbox in MBD 2017 allows a corresponding STEP 242 file to be created automatically in the background and attached as part of the technical data package.

After the publishing step, let’s take a look into the published document content and explore several display improvements. As discussed in an earlier article, SOLIDWORKS MBD 3D PDF supports multiple configurations captured in multiple 3D views in one document. However, the problem with the previous releases was that when you switched between the views representing different configurations, the independent viewport updated to display the matching configuration, but the configuration-specific properties didn’t update in the viewport or on the text-based sheet areas. Therefore, there could be mismatches between the model and its properties, leading to miscommunications. This issue was discussed in a forum topic and has been a key gap for some manufacturers.

MBD 2017 now promises a solution. The key is first to capture the configuration-specific properties in notes or tables as 3D Views in SOLIDWORKS MBD and then to populate them in the independent viewports into a 3D PDF document. Figure 3 shows a side-by-side comparison between two configurations in two viewports. Please note the configuration-specific properties such as material, mass and approval date in the note and table are updated on the right to match the new configuration, while generic properties such as “Part number” and “Drawn by” stayed the same.

Figure 3. Display configuration specific properties in a 3D PDF.

It’s worth noting that these property texts must be displayed in viewports to update properly in response to configuration changes. They won’t update if they are on the sheet areas outside of viewports.

Speaking of viewport displays, in addition to the models, notes and tables, supplementary geometries such as center axes, sheet metal bend lines, exploded lines and profile sketches are often important to present to facilitate technical communications. As shown in Figures 4, 5 and 6, the 3D PDF published by MBD 2017 can display these supplementary geometries as gray sketches. As you may notice, these elements are solid lines rather than dashes or dotted lines. This is due to a limitation today with the Adobe Reader 3D content, which doesn’t support these line styles yet.

Figure 4. Center axes display in 3D PDF.

Figure 5. Sheet metal bend lines display and the model tree sketches in 3D PDF.

Figure 6. Exploded lines display in 3D PDF.

As suggested in Figure 5, all the display elements in the viewport bear their corresponding model tree nodes in Adobe Reader, such as the sheet metal bend lines and bounding boxes, which provides a nice tool to match and locate a large amount of display content thanks to the cross-highlighting capability. You can also control their visibilities by checking or unchecking the boxes in front of the tree nodes.

To further assist the usage of this model tree tool, MBD 2017 has added a neat improvement to incorporate the DimXpert tree node names into the 3D PDF model tree node names as shown in Figure 7. The goal is not only to preserve the user inputs from SOLIDWORKS to 3D PDF, but also to comply with industry or company standards whose naming conventions may require 3D annotation names to be descriptive and meaningful for clearer communications. You may have noticed that the sequences of the annotation nodes as shown in Figure 7 from left to right don’t exactly match yet. I hope it will be addressed in future releases.

Figure 7. Inherit 3D annotation names from SOLIDWORKS to 3D PDF.

Now let’s wrap up this article with a quick summary in Table 1. To learn more about how this new release can help you with your MBD implementation, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

Table 1. New 3D PDF features and benefits.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

Once a 3D PDF is opened and the 3D content is activated, we are presented with a wealth of information such as product and manufacturing information (PMI), texts, images, 3D viewports, predefined views, tree nodes and attachments. How can we take full advantage of this rich content? Let’s look into the PMI first in this article.

3D dimensions and tolerances attached to models are an important step in model-based definition (MBD). They convey critical engineering and manufacturing requirements, so it’s vital for downstream consumers to understand and act upon them correctly. One common problem, though, is how to relate a 3D callout to its associated features. A leader line pointing to a feature can help, but it doesn’t point to a group of features such as a pattern of multiple instances. And a leader line may sometimes be obscured by the model body. To illustrate the relationship between 3D callouts and their corresponding features, the ASME Y14.41-2012 standard requires the “visual response” capabilities. That is, when you click on a 3D callout, not only should the callout be highlighted, but also should the corresponding features it defines. SOLIDWORKS MBD supports this cross-highlighting behavior as shown in a previous post, “Top SOLIDWORKS MBD Tips and Tricks: Hole Callouts.” One step further, the 3D PDF published by the software also complies with this requirement as shown in Figure 1. This model can be downloaded at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) website. Please note that cross-highlighting only works in one way—from 3D callouts to features—not the other way around. The reason is that a feature, especially a datum feature, could be heavily referenced and lead to too many remotely associated 3D callouts. The highlighting is to let a few items stand out from the rest, but if too many items were highlighted all together, it would defeat the purpose of this differentiation.

Figure 1. Selecting one callout highlights all the countersink hole pattern instances in red in a 3D PDF.

The cross-highlighting behavior works on mobile devices too as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. 3D PMI cross-highlighting in green on an iPad.

Another common problem with viewing 3D geometric dimensions and tolerances (GD&T) is to envision the datum features. We need to know where datum features A, B, C or D, E and F are in order to make sense of a feature control frame. However, these datum symbols may not be visible or easily legible from the current perspective. So oftentimes, we have to search through multiple views, and rotate and zoom the model to locate these datum symbols. Then we need to remember what they point to as datum features. Finally, we must establish the reference frames to interpret a geometric tolerance. This issue is further compounded by multiple datum reference frames in complex models. To solve this problem, the 3D PDF by SOLIDWORKS MBD provides a context command, “Highlight associated datums,” when you right-click on a feature control frame as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Highlight associated datum features in a 3D PDF.

Now three datum features are highlighted in red, along with the positional tolerance control frame callout and its associated hole pattern on the base plate, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Three datum features (the bottom face, a bigger mounting hole on the left and a smaller hole on the right) are highlighted automatically.

You may have noticed another context menu command, “Highlight associated PMIs,” in Figure 3. This command highlights the corresponding hole diameters and the constructive basic dimensions for this positional tolerance as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Highlight associated PMIs in a 3D PDF.

These cross-highlighting behaviors can help retrieve key information quickly, confirm the desired features and speed up the comprehension of and executions according to the 3D dimensions and tolerances.

Besides 3D dimensions and tolerances, tables are also often used to organize scattered bits and pieces of information. Bill of materials (BOM) is one of the most frequently used cases. Figure 6 shows the bidirectional cross-highlighting between a 3D viewport and a BOM table. You can click on a component in the viewport, and then the corresponding line item in the BOM table will be highlighted such as the line item number 10, tubing top section, shown in Figure 6.

An engineer once asked me what would happen if a line item was not displayed yet in a long BOM list. The answer is that you don’t have to manually scroll up or down the list to locate it. Your click on a viewport component will automatically find its line, scroll the list to make it visible and then highlight it.

Please notice that the cross-highlighting here is bidirectional. Clicking on an item in a BOM table will also highlight the corresponding components in the viewport. This can help you to locate a component in the way you prefer, either from a viewport or from a BOM table.

Figure 6. Bidirectional cross-highlighting between a BOM table and a 3D viewport.

A SOLIDWORKS MBD 3D PDF can also be published with generic tables saved from the software. Figure 7 shows a simple title block in a published 3D PDF. And Figure 8 shows the insert generic table command inside the 3D PDF template editor. Once a generic table is defined onto a 3D PDF template, the linked custom properties in the table will be automatically populated with the actual model values during the publishing step.

Figure 7. A title block published per an inserted generic table (top).

Figure 7. An inserted generic table in the 3D PDF template editor.

The article, “How to publish a 3D PDF with SOLIDWORKS MBD,” explains more details about the publishing steps. Another blog post, “How to Use 3D PDFs,” will walk you through the basic tools available in Adobe Reader. Last but not least, you may also download several 3D PDF samples published by SOLIDWORKS MBD at a forum post. I’d love to hear your feedback on publishing and consuming 3D PDF in the comment area below. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its product page.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise and smart manufacturing.

Traditionally, 3D CAD data has been treated in a way similar to a black box. The reason is the data is often constructed in proprietary CAD formats or neutral formats that need special CAD licenses or viewers to read. This black box of data obviously imposes a communication barrier.

A machine shop shared with me its typical way of handling 3D CAD data. A salesperson interfaces with clients and gets 3D data in order to build quoting packages. However, he or she may not be able to read the data. Either the person doesn’t have the CAD licenses, which could be expensive, or a CAD viewer cannot be installed due to IT administration restrictions. Or the viewer may simply be out of date. As Casey Gorman with Sparton put it in a presentation that shared MBD implementation experiences, a CAD viewer may be free, but its ongoing IT maintenance is certainly not. Therefore, oftentimes, a salesperson has to pass along the 3D CAD data to an internal engineer and wait for the engineer to crack this black box with the right CAD tools and extract the requirements. Finally, the salesperson can put together quotes and reply to the clients. If this kind of back and forth communication seems slow, the delay can only get compounded when a salesperson travels all the time and can’t work side by side with an engineer in the office. In short, this 3D communication barrier increases the cost of doing business and prolongs cycle times.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this barrier could be lowered so that more job functions outside of engineers could consume 3D data? This is exactly the benefit of 3D PDF, or a PDF file embedded with 3D content. All we need to read a 3D PDF is a free Adobe Reader, which has been installed on 93 percent of Internet-connected computers globally. So when you send out a 3D PDF file to a sourcing manager, a salesperson or a supplier, most likely they have Adobe Reader installed on their computers already and can therefore open it right away to read the 3D data as shown in Figure 1 with no special viewers required. As explained in a previous article, “3D PDF Enhancements in SOLIDWORKS MBD 2016,” each of the viewports below supports pan, zoom and rotate of the model. It also includes a series of predefined views, 3D dimensions and tolerances, custom properties, bill of materials (BOM) tables, images and attachments. The 3D PDF communication saves not only the software costs, but also the deployment and IT administrative overhead.

Figure 1. A 3D PDF example.

Even better, there are free 3D PDF reader apps for Apple and Android mobile and tablet devices as shown in Figure 2. Now the salesperson on the road whom I mentioned earlier or other job functions who are not often at their computers can consume 3D data and extract key requirements conveniently.

Figure 2. 3D PDF readers on an iPhone and an iPad.

However, before you start jumping into 3D PDF, I’d like to share several reminders.

1. The 3D PDF by SOLIDWORKS MBD works best in Adobe Reader on a desktop computer. There are many PDF readers that support 2D content well such as texts and images, but not necessarily 3D CAD data. Even the Chrome Internet browser can read PDF files today, but it disables the 3D content in a 3D PDF. This becomes especially frustrating when you click on a 3D PDF link inside Chrome. The browser will take precedence over Adobe Reader to open the file, but does not support 3D content at all as shown in Figure 3 where the 3D viewports are all blank. Many engineers have complained and doubted 3D PDF due to this misunderstanding.

Figure 3. Disabled 3D content in a 3D PDF in Chrome.

2. The first time you open a 3D PDF, Adobe Reader holds off the 3D content with a security control as shown in Figure 4. You can choose to trust this document one time only or always by clicking on the Options button on the right side of the yellow warning bar.

Figure 4. An Adobe Reader security control disabled the 3D content in a 3D PDF.

Or you may set the application preference as always Enable playing of 3D content as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Enable playing of 3D content in Adobe Reader.

3. After Reader XI, Adobe released a new version, Reader DC, in April 2015. Both versions work well with 3D PDF. I just find the 3D product manufacturing information (PMI) selection became easier in Reader DC. For example, in Figure 6, the mouse cursor is clicking in the empty space inside the box of a basic dimension 20 mm in Reader XI, but it isn’t able to select this dimension. You have to click exactly on the numbers, letters, lines or curves to select them. In Figure 7, the same click at the same spot in the same 3D PDF using Reader DC has successfully selected the dimension and highlighted the corresponding hole features.

Figure 6. The PMI was not selected in Adobe Reader XI.

Figure 7. The PMI was selected successfully in Adobe Reader DC.

4. There used to be a 3D PDF technology based on the universal 3D (U3D) format, which has not been updated for almost 10 years. So please be careful with this dated format. The 3D PDF by SOLIDWORKS MBD is based on the latest ISO 14739-1: 2014 standard. It also complies with Long Term Archiving and Retrieval (LOTAR) requirements.

With these reminders, please feel free to download several 3D PDF samples published by SOLIDWORKS MBD at a forum post. To find out more details on the publishing steps, please follow this blog post, “How to Publish a 3D PDF with SOLIDWORKS MBD.” I hope this article can help you get started with 3D PDF. We will look into other key aspects such as views and PMI at a later time. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its product page.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

At a quick glance, you may notice several new buttons on the editor command bar: Cut, Copy, Paste, Format Painter, Align, Group, Order, Rectangle and Lock.

Figure 1. The updated 3D PDF template editor command bar.

These buttons are self-explanatory, so I’ll just illustrate three of them with quick examples. First, Figure 2 circles five headers in different text styles. Obviously they will look much more consistent and professional if they share the same style.

Figure 2. Inconsistent text styles.

The format painter comes in handy here because you don’t have to tweak the font, size, style, justification or any other style setting individually and manually. You can just pick the header you want, click the format painter and apply all its style settings to your selections. This command stays active until you cancel it, so that you can paint as many text boxes as needed without having to re-launch it.

Figure 3. The format painter gives all the headers a consistent style.

Rectangles have been a common request among MBD users to categorize and contain information. Let’s compare two text sections in Figure 4. The texts within rectangles on the left clearly look more organized and easier to navigate.

Figure 4. A comparison between texts within rectangles (left) and without rectangles (right).

Now you can draw rectangles and adjust its properties to surround and organize the texts as shown in Figure 5. The one I like most is the corner radius option because it allows you to replace the stressful sharp corners with more natural and polished fillets. By the way, you may need to send a rectangle to back to reveal the texts inside using the Order button. More discussions on the need of display orders can be found in this MBD forum discussion.

Figure 5. Draw a rectangle and adjust its background color, border, border thickness and corner radius.

Now with all the text styles, rectangle properties and their placements on the template, it will be a good idea to lock them as shown in Figure 6 to avoid any unintentional edits. Multiple selections are supported, so that you can select all the controls and lock them together.

Figure 6. Lock multiple controls to avoid unintentional edits.

Now you can’t even move them, let alone change their properties as shown in Figure 7, which is great to protect your edits from before. Of course, you may unlock to continue the fine-tuning.

Figure 7. Property settings are disabled and an unlock option is available.

Speaking of moving these elements, aside from the typical drag-and-drop operations with a mouse, you can now move them using arrow keys to achieve more accurate and consistent placements and adjustments.

Another neat usability polish is the placement of a text box. In previous releases, a newly inserted text box was always placed on the upper-left corner on a template sheet, which is “almost always the undesirable spot” as explained by an MBD user. Now when you insert a new text box, its placement will follow your mouse cursor as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. A text box placement follows your mouse cursor.

In addition to the ability to edit on one sheet, there are also other enhancements on the sheet arrangements. For example, for client-facing documents, on the first page, you may want to display a high-quality product image as a cover sheet, but you may not want to include any 3D model viewport or the predefined view strip yet. Another common use case is to declare certain statements upfront on the initial pages. For instance, in the U.S., defense-related documents are required to declare the international traffic in arms regulations (ITAR) statements upfront. Similarly, some companies require the intellectual property (IP) or confidentiality statements to be acknowledged on the first page of a technical document. Any party who is not the intended recipient of this document should not look further into it.

In the previous releases, it wasn’t possible because the template architecture required the primary viewport and the view strip on the first page. Now it’s more flexible as shown in the cover sheet in Figure 9.

Figure 9. A cover sheet of a high quality image with no viewport or pre-defined view strip.

You can also drag and drop the sheets to resequence their orders as shown in Figure 10 to avoid unnecessary page deletions and recreations. Renaming sheets is now allowed as well in order to identify their content more clearly.

Figure 10. Drag and drop a sheet to resequence its order.

Overall, the 3D PDF template editor is much more user-friendly in the 2017 release to help you produce more professional and polished 3D PDF documents. What do you think? Please feel free to leave comments below.

Now let’s recap the new features and their benefits in Table 1.

Table 1. 3D PDF template editor new features and benefits.

Here are two 3D PDF samples published using the latest templates: a Myomo assembly and a spindle shaft. The links may open the PDF files directly in your web browser, but if you download them and open them using Adobe Reader, you will be able to see the 3D content. This blog post, “How to Use 3D PDF?” will walk you through several reminders and the basic 3D capabilities in Adobe Reader. Another blog post, “How to Publish a 3D PDF with SOLIDWORKS MBD,” will show you the key publishing steps. To learn more about how this new release can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

Multiple Viewports in One 3D PDF Document

A 3D PDF is a great tool to present rich design information. All we need is a free Adobe Reader. In the 3D content viewport of a PDF document, we can pan, zoom and rotate a model in a similar way as in a CAD application.

However, one viewport isn’t enough in many cases. For example, we may want to present multiple perspectives of a product all together as an overview or arrange several viewports of different configurations side by side for easier comparison. And as I stated in an earlier article, model-based definition (MBD) doesn’t mean paperless. In the actual production, we oftentimes need to print out digital documents as hard copies. Similar to printing a regular drawing, we want to be able to hit the Print button in Adobe Reader and have all the necessary views come out in a professional fashion, including orthogonal views, detailed views, exploded views, cross-sections and so on.

From the perspective of MBD implementation, 3D PDF documents may need to be reviewed and approved by many internal or external key stakeholders. Some of them may still prefer the look and feel of 2D drawings. Therefore, if 3D PDF view arrangements closely resemble what was on 2D drawings, it will require fewer examinations, speed up the review and approval process and hence make the transition to MBD easier.

Now, using SOLIDWORKS MBD 2016, we can insert as many projected viewports or independent viewports as needed in the template editor and publish them as a 3D PDF (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Projected viewports and independent viewports in the template editor and 3D PDF.

Project viewports are associated with the primary viewport. Upon any model rotation in the primary viewport, the projected views will rotate automatically according to predefined perspectives, such as back, top and so on, relative to the primary viewport. The intention here is to imitate the 2D drawing of automatic orthogonal projections.

An independent viewport is more flexible because it can be populated with any predefined views independently of other viewports. More importantly, these view selections can be remembered and saved into the 3D PDF document using Adobe Reader. This means that in one document session, we can assign a group of views to a group of independent viewports. These assignments are maintained as we scroll up and down the pages or interact with the 3D content so that we don’t have to make the selections repeatedly. In addition, even if this document is closed or the Adobe Reader application is ended, we can still reopen this 3D PDF and have all the viewport assignments preserved if we have saved this document using Adobe Reader. That’s right. We only need the free Adobe Reader to save the viewport assignments.

The benefit of saving view assignments in Adobe Reader is that the consumers of 3D PDF documents can adjust which view should be displayed on which page according to their job requirements. For example, the manufacturing team may want detailed views with key tolerances on the first page so that a shop floor planner can quickly decide whether a part should be manufactured in house or has to be outsourced. The assembly team may care more about an overview, exploded states and detailed views on the interfaces so they can choose to give these views higher priorities.

By the way, an independent viewport can not only display models, but can also host 3D views of notes or tables as shown in Figure 2. There is no limit to the number of 3D views or independent viewports in a 3D PDF. You can learn more MBD implementation experiences in Casey Gorman’s presentation from SOLIDWORKS World 2016, “Oh! The Trauma of MBD: What Will Happen to My 2D?”

I personally like independent viewports better because they’re flexible and can cover the use cases of projected viewports.

Figure 2. An independent view to show a 3D view of notes. (Image courtesy of Casey Gorman and Sparton.)

Multiple Sheets in One 3D PDF Document

Once multiple viewports are in place, the next natural question is how to fit them into one document. Furthermore, besides viewports, there are many other types of content such as the 3D view panel, notes, custom properties, images and tables. A long bill of material (BOM) table, a detailed note or regulatory statements themselves may take up an entire page. Also, in the context of hard copies, some companies require that all the texts and tables must be visible in their entirety. Unlike digital files, printouts don’t allow a scroll bar in a text field or a table list scrolling up and down to hide and show information. Therefore, the extensive content in a 3D PDF document requires multiple sheets. This enhancement has been implemented in the MBD 2016 release.

Adding a new sheet is very simple. Just click on the + sign at the bottom of the template editor and the end of all tabs as shown in Figure 3. We can add as many as we need. Each and every sheet can hold its own independent viewports, tables, notes and images. Deleting a sheet is simple. Just click on the red X sign next to a tab name.

Figure 3. Multiples sheets in the 3D PDF template editor and a published 3D PDF.

The support of multiple sheets in MBD 2016 can greatly ease the transition from 2D drawings to MBD. It enables richer content in one document, better content organization and printer-friendly layouts.

Here is a video blog post sharing more details on the editing and publishing of 3D PDF templates. To get a first-hand feel, you can also download some free 3D PDF samples at the SOLIDWORKS MBD forum. Adobe Reader is recommended to open these documents because other applications such as the Google Chrome browser may remove the 3D content inside. Also, in the Adobe Reader application, you may need to enable the 3D content, as explained in this Adobe Help article.

To recap, we looked into two handy 3D PDF enhancements in the SOLIDWORKS MBD 2016 release: multiple viewports and multiple sheets. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementation, please visit the SOLIDWORKS MBD product page.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.