Adobe significantly strengthened the 3D publishing capabilities of the PDF format today by announcing a technology alliance with PLM and mechanical CAD vendor UGS, creator of the JT Open standard for displaying 3D design data. In the two-way agreement, Adobe will add support for the JT Open standard to Adobe Acrobat, and UGS will support the creation of PDF files from its suite of PLM solutions.
The agreement means that soon, Adobe Acrobat will be able to embed JT files into PDF documents. The JT Open format is considered by many experts to be more robust at displaying 3D data, while maintaining a light file size. Adobe currently supports Universal 3D (U3D), a 3D display format created by a vendor consortium led by Intel and Hitachi. Adobe employees acknowledged privately at the launch of Acrobat 7 that U3D was a short-term solution to publishing 3D data in PDF. Adobe selected it as their first supported 3D format because it was an open, easily implemented standard.
Among leading AEC CAD vendors, Autodesk and Bentley currently support the JT format. I expect that the other leading AEC vendors will add JT support to their portfolio shortly. No timing for the new capabilities was specified in the joint announcement.
--RSN