Adobe has just announced that they have outsourced all of their 3D technologies from the Acrobat 9 Pro Extended to ‘Tech Soft 3D’. They’ve finished an in-depth internal evaluation of their products and decided that working with 3D CAD products is hard and best left to experts, so future work in integration with CATIA, Pro/E, Solidworks, and others will be left to TechSoft. But Adobe’s not just walking away:
As I’ve talked with customers throughout this process, the number one question on their minds is, “Will Adobe continue to support 3D in the free Adobe Reader long-term?” The answer is — and I can’t stress this enough — that Adobe is fully committed to supporting 3D viewing and interaction capabilities within Adobe Reader and Acrobat. We recognize our responsibility to customers worldwide who depend on 3D PDF to collaborate, control, and store their product development data for long-term archival and retrieval. That commitment hasn’t diminished, and, I think, has actually strengthened through this partnership.
The 3D PDF support is a nice tool, great for sending low-resolution models to folks without fancy viewer tools. It’s not used very often, however, but it’s nice in a pinch.
The whole announcement can be read at their site.
