Release Notes

CAD Exchanger Beta Update 2

Contents
What's New
Introduction
Supported Formats
System Requirements
Installation Notes
Known Limitations
Disclaimer and Legal Information

What's New in Public Beta Update 2

General:

Added Command Line Interface (CLI) mode which enables translation in batch mode. Start 'CAD Exchanger Command Prompt' from the Start menu or invoke 'ExchangerConv.exe --help' to get usage details.
Added CAD Exchanger Software Development Kit (SDK) which enables integration of CAD Exchanger software libraries into customer applications. For details please contact info@cadexchanger.com.
Improved performance of computation of surface model triangulations; this affects import, changing display modes and changing triangulation precision operations. Additional gain can be received on multi-core systems due to execution in parallel threads.

GUI:

Slightly improved visual settings for more stylish appearance of 3D models.
Added export of 3D view contents to PNG and BMP formats.
Added option to apply multi-threading for computation-intensive algorithms (currently affects triangulation computation only).

ACIS-SAT format:

Added support of colors to import and export.
Exporter now has a user-defined option to specify target ACIS format version (from 2.0 to 20.0)

For a full list of changes please refer to the CHANGES file.

Introduction

The CAD Exchanger application provides an environment for importing, visualizing and exporting 3D models in different CAD formats. Beta Update 2 version may be used until June 30, 2010.

This document provides system requirements, installation instructions, known limitations, and legal information. The latest version is available online.

To get support on product use or to provide feedback about it please visit the users' forum at http://www.cadexchanger.com/forum. To request additional information please send an email to info@cadexchanger.com.

Supported Formats

Currently the CAD Exchanger application supports the following CAD formats:

Format	File extensions	Importer	Exporter
IGES 5.3	.igs, .iges	Yes	Yes
STEP AP203, AP214	.stp, .step	Yes	Yes
ACIS SAT (R1.5 - R20.0)	*.sat	Yes	Yes
STL	*.stl	Yes	Yes
VRML 2.0 (1997)	*.wrl		Yes
BRep	*.brep	Yes	Yes

Support of import and export is implemented in the form of plugins that can be installed separately and recognized by the product. The up-to-date list of supported formats is displayed on the Start Page when the CAD Exchanger starts.

System Requirements

A PC based on an IA-32 architecture processor (Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 processor 1GHz or faster). Multi-core system is recommended for better performance;
1 GB RAM (2GB or more recommended);
256 MB free disk space;
Microsoft* Windows XP*, Microsoft* Windows Vista*, Microsoft* Windows Server 2003*, or Microsoft* Windows Server 2008*. Windows 7 may work but not tested.

Installation Notes

Before installing Beta Update you must uninstall a previous version.

Once you have downloaded the installation executable, double-click on it to begin the installation.

The default installation directory is C:\Program Files\CAD Exchanger.

To uninstall the product, open the Control Panel and select the Add or Remove Programs applet, select "CAD Exchanger" and click Remove.

Known limitations

Common:

Depending on a previously imported model, export may give no result. For instance trying to export to the STEP format a model imported from STL will produce no result. User's notification will be implemented in the future releases.
Exporting to a format and importing back may lead to loss of data. In most cases this can be due to format limitations. For instance, exporting a colored surface model into STL will lose information on exact geometry (NURBS, cylinders, etc) and colors. Such a model imported back will be represented as a set of triangles of one single color.
Computation of shading representations of complex models (hundreds of faces) can sometimes be relatively slow. Performance improvements will be regularly addressed in the future releases.
File names may not contain non-ASCII symbols.

IGES and STEP:

Visibility status of the model in the Model Explorer is ignored when exporting.
IGES currently supports only ASCII characters for author and company in the file header.

VRML:

VRML currently exports only Surface models and their faces geometry. Mesh models, free points and curves of Surface models as well as colors are ignored.

ACIS:

File units are ignored, the model is translated as if it were in millimeters;
Names are not yet supported;
Files created with ACIS version prior to R1.05 are not supported;
lawcur, lawsur, offsetintcur, tapersur, edgetapersur, swepttapersur, shadowtapersur, ruledtapersur entities are translated using their spline approximation. If they do not have full approximation, entities are not translated;
The exporter writes into a file header default values of spatial tolerance (1e-7) and angle tolerance (1e-12) regardless of real model accuracy.
Visibility status of the model in the Model Explorer is ignored when exporting.

Disclaimer and Legal Information

This software is provided "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE WARRANTY OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.