Adobe Acrobat 3D: a very real threat to DWF

Architosh and CADwire have feature reviews of Acrobat 3D and I must say it sounds really, really good. I am big fan of the PDF standard but not of recent Adobe Acrobat releases (the term 'bloatware' springs to mind). When I first heard that Adobe where planning on including 3D support in Acrobat I assumed it would be a token gesture in order to differentiate it from its 2D PDF competitors like Foxit (my favourite Windows pdf reader). I began to change my mind and think it was something a little more serious when AutoDesk suddenly seemed to get very anti-PDF when it came to exchanging building information. 

Reading the reviews of Acrobat 3D I can see why the people at AutoDesk seemed so worried, it has one major killer feature that really sets it apart from all the competition, a 'print screen' equivalent for 3D models. This 3D importing feature does not work at the software application level like most data importers, it skips all the difficulties associated with data format translation and plucks the 3D information directly out of the OpenGL buffer. This is a really intelligent move from Adobe, it gives their product a degree of model importing support perhaps only rivaled by Right Hemisphere.

From a user perspective it means they can pluck 3D models out of a variety of applications and easily exchange them between others and thanks to Adobe's ubiquity on the desktop there will be almost no concerns about the recipient not being able to read the pdf file at the other end. From an IT manager's perspective its easier to go with Adobe than AutoDesk's DWF because PDF and Adobe Reader are in the mainstream already (according to Adobe they've distributed 1.5 billion copies) so there is no need to train users or install additional software (like AutoDesk's very fat DWF viewer). Vendors like Bentley and Graphisoft must be happy as their products will have Adobe Acrobat 3D support without having do a thing. Plus now that there is a ubiquitous alternative to DWF as a 3D document medium (above and beyond the DWG/3DS data formats) they will not have expend the time and resources implementing DWF support in their own products, if anything these resources will be put into improved 3D PDF support.

This approach does have its drawbacks, plucking data straight out of the OpenGL buffer is not the most accurate method hence you could not trust measurements taken directly off the model if building it. DWF supporters point this out along with a number of other PDF shortcomings, but at the end of the day whilst technically not the best solution, PDF (like Microsoft Office) gets the job done and is used by the majority of people.

Why are AutoDesk pushing DWF? As their own diagrams illustrate it is the glue that holds the entire AutoDesk product silo together, without it they open the door for other competitors to seamlessly replace AutoDesk products within AEC teams. This competition is not a bad thing however, I think the two rival formats are doing more for interoperability between CAD suites than what ten years of IFC development has ever done.