After a particularly successful meeting this afternoon where the use of a 3D CAD model to demonstrate specific issues limiting a project I’m working on turned out very well I need to find a way to distribute this without everyone else being required to buy a £4,000 license for the software.
Can anyone point me in the direction of an open source/ free 3D PDF writers that will plug into Bentley Microstation?

Are you distributing the project details or do you want everyone to use a new bit of software?

you may need to figure in some training expense too if it is the later.

Isn’t there a 3d viewer available for the software you use? For example, Solidworks give away a viewer that allows you to open ‘real’ Solidworks 3d models, spin them around etc. You may even be able to save your files in a format that Solidworks viewer will open.

Do you need the recipients to be able to manipulate the model i.e. orbit, zoom, look inside?

Secondly, if you only require a 2d ‘print’ of a 3d model, then does adode Pdf not show up as a printer in your print / plot settings?

Also, try cutepdf. Very good within autocad.

richmars – that’s eDrawings. You can either download the free eDrawings viewer or whoever created the file can bundle the viewer and the file together, the recipient gets it as an .exe file. Unless you created the file with Solidworks originally I doubt you’d be able to bundle the viewer with it though.

But you can open other files, apart from Solidworks; edrawings will open stl, Pro E plus others. If the files are saved as one of these, then use edrawings,

aP!
does bentley viewer help?

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/free+software/

hope all is well in the uk?

Hehe! Thanks Scotia. UK good.
The people who want to view and manipulate the model don’t work in an environment that will allow them to download Bentley View (and it requires a Select license to work properly), also the model contains a lot of reference files that aren’t going to be distributed out generally.
I know that it is possible to create a 3D PDF file but I was hoping not to have to buy the creator.

They dropped 3d PDF from version 9 extended pro the barstewards, I bought a license It was sold to tetra4d or at least the 3d translator was and you now have to update your license through them

Bentley do a viewer called Bentley view but iir from my old days on it it was for 2d only

Spinfire springs to mind though I’m unsure if its still free