IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) was among first vendor-neutral CAD formats designed to enable interoperability between different CAD systems. The latest versions of IGES have been approved by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and published by US PRO (U.S. Product Data Association). The latest officially approved version of the IGES standard is version 5.3 which was published in 1996. Nonetheless, IGES remains a broadly used format (along with STEP) supported by all major CAD/CAM/CAE systems such as CATIA, Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks, Solid Edge, NX, Pro/Engineer, Creo and multiple others. IGES files usually have *.igs or *.iges file name extensions.
PRC (Product Representation Compact) is a 3D file format that can be used to embed 3D data in a PDF file.
This highly compressed format facilitates the storage of different representations of a 3D model. For example, you can save only a visual representation that consists of polygons (a tessellation), or you can save the model's exact geometry (B-rep data). Varying levels of compression can be applied to the 3D CAD data when it is converted to the PRC format using Adobe Acrobat 3D.
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 moreCAD Exchanger enables RapidSense and RapidPlan to read 3D CAD formats thanks to a unified API, fast data processing, adjustable meshing, and cancellation support.
Read moreWe will start a series of a blog posts dedicated to different 3D CAD file formats. We begin with the veteran among CAD data - IGES.
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