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Overview

Table of Contents

Quick Introduction

The CAD Exchanger Web Toolkit addon is a JavaScript library to visualize, explore and analyze 3D CAD models. Unlike Autodesk Forge, the Web Toolkit can be used to develop web applications running entirely on premise (i.e. inside corporate network) without exposing any confidential data outside of the company.

The CAD Exchanger Web Toolkit is used as an underlying engine of CAD Exchanger Online Viewer. Thus you can build applications providing comparable functionality.

CAD Exchanger Web Toolkit based application
CAD Exchanger Web Toolkit based application

The Web Toolkit uses the three.js library to display 3D contents via WebGL on a client’s side.

In order to display any 3D file with the help of the Web Toolkit the contents must be first prepared by converting the original 3D file into one of the two web-friendly formats: CDXWEB or CDXBIMWEB. Both of them are highly-compressed binary formats that allow efficient data transfer over networks to provide excellent application responsiveness and UX. Throughout this documentation we will refer to both of them as CDXWEB.

Conversion to CDXWEB can be performed using a CAD Exchanger SDK - a set of C++, C#, Java and Python libraries to work with 3D data in a sophisticated way (including B-Rep modeling and mesh generation). CAD Exchanger SDK can be used for building complex web applications including 3D modeling.

Key Features

The CAD Exchanger Web Toolkit provides the following features:

  • Reading multiple 3D formats (using CAD Exchanger SDK).
  • Access to product structure of assemblies and parts.
  • 3D geometry: B-Rep (Boundary Representation, or precise geometry) and meshes (tessellated geometry).
  • Metadata: names, user-defined properties, id’s, etc.
  • Colors and materials with textures and transparencies.
  • Measurements: bounding boxes, distances, angles. With the help of CAD Exchanger SDK, additional measurements are available such as surface area, volume, centroid, minimum bounding box, etc.
  • PMI (Product and Manufacturing Information).
  • Multiple display modes, including shading, wireframe and ghost views.
  • Interactive selection and hovering in 3D view.

System Requirements

Refer to Javascript Support.

Note
Make sure that WebGL hardware acceleration is enabled in your web browser, as otherwise you will experience significant performance issues during interactive manipulations in a 3D view.