Collada (COLLAborative Design Activity) is an interchange format for interactive 3D applications. Originally developed by Sony Computer Industry, now it is managed by the Khronos Group, a member-funded industry consortium, which now shares the copyright with Sony, Recently Collada has been well adopted by ISO as a publicly available specification, ISO/PAS 17506.
It is an XML-based schema that allows data exchange among 3D Digital Content Creation tools, such as SketchUp, Maya, 3ds Max, and Rhino. COLLADA files have the *.dae file extension, which stands for digital asset exchange.
Approximately 23% of CAD professionals globally use SOLIDWORKS on daily basis. Together they generate tremendous volume of 3D files in native format, which are troublesome to feed into 3rd party major and minor CAD systems due to format specifics.
SOLIDWORKS files (previous to version 2015) use the Microsoft Structured Storage file format. This means that there are various files embedded within each SLDDRW (drawing files), SLDPRT (part files), SLDASM (assembly files) file, including preview bitmaps and metadata sub-files.
CAD Exchanger seamlessly reads SOLIDWORKS data (.sldprt and .sldasm extensions) and converts to the file format of your choice.
A CAD file is an output of a CAD software, containing key information about the designed object: its geometry and topology representation, 3D model hierarchy, metadata, and visual attributes depending on the format of the file.
Read moreIn the 3rd and 4th parts of the series, we will talk about surface display modes in 3D CAD programs, starting with the shading mode.
Read moreWe continue to execute our mission to improve the import of massive 3D models. In 3.16 users will notice enhancements in both desktop and web visualization, as well as the extension of the support of the native file formats.
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