3DMojo

Newsflash: 3DVIA Composer has been added to the breakout session grid at COE!

Chris Williams, the General Manager of 3DVIA Enterprise, will host an in-depth session titled Revolutionizing Design Communication: Creating Product Information with 3DVIA Composer. This presentation and discussion will begin on Tuesday, April 29 at 4:30 pm, as part of the “COE Briefing Center #1” track, in the Australia 3 room. This news is so late-breaking that the COE website has not yet been updated with this information.
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It had been a long standing assumption of mine that anybody threatened by new technology would dig in their heels and fight for the status quo. In the case of 3DVIA Composer, I had believed that our ability to rapidly generate rich content would threaten the traditional technical writer.

I will not belabor the point any further... instead I bring you the voice of David Lance, an experienced technical writer who was recently introduced to 3DVIA Composer. (Full disclosure: David is a tech writer for SolidWorks.)
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This blog post got me thinking about the way that technical illustrations have evolved over the past few years, from the days of airbrushing and photography to a new digital era of creating illustrations on a computer. It also got me thinking about a January 2008 article in Intercom magazine, entitled "Three-Dimensional Illustration for Technical Communicators" which has this to say about the evolution of technical illustrations from flat 2D images into robust 3D images:

"You don't need to be a skilled illustrator to create effective 3-D graphics. Three-dimensional illustration allows the technical communicator to respond quickly to project changes and create imagery appropriate for most publications or multimedia. Burns' article shows the benefits of 3-D artwork and its potential for technical communicators."

Indeed this concept of evolving from 2D to 3D artwork has great potential, and from this article's abstract it certainly sounds like a great way to improve comprehension. But what is missing in this article is how to improve the life of the illustrator and dramatically improve quality and performance -- instead it mostly talks about ways the illustrator can create 3D geometry from 2D engineering data. To me this seems a little backwards, and to an engineer that is accustomed to working in a 3D environment, this workflow can be a shocking realization.

Why would the technical illustrators be happy to recreate 3D geometry when they could simply re-use the 3D CAD data? The answer is that they are not CAD experts, they don't know how to re-use that 3D data, and they simply don't have the right tools available to them. They are still in the dark ages when it comes to working in a 3D environment, and are only able to improve their output by tiny, incremental, evolutionary steps.

It's time to stop looking for incremental improvements. It's time to take a revolutionary step in the world of technical illustrations and product documentation, and to fully harness the power of 3D thoroughout your organization.

It's time to start using 3DVIA Composer.

Many people are familiar with this illusion of the "old lady, young lady" image. This old/new paradigm seems to be all the rage lately. On American television, we witness countless new reality shows featuring celebrities from the 80s and 90s, desperately trying to find new fame. While sometimes entertaining, there is also an embarrassing undertone to the shows, like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

It's very similar to how PTC is reviving old Itedo Isodraw references and massaging them into wonderfully new Abortext Isodraw references. These retreads from the past, pure 2D technical illustration references, are being re-framed and re-branded as great new references that are fully leveraging 3D in new and innovative ways. While these references are sometimes entertaining, they are also incredibly misleading -- they are still "old ladies".

3DVIA Composer is faster, easier to use, and far more flexible than anything else on the market, and we continue to prove that in benchmark after benchmark. Don't be fooled the next time you hear some propaganda from the competition, and be sure to put them to the test. It is the new architecture of 3DVIA Composer that is the only "young lady" in the picture.

We have said this many times: visualization is not enough; viewing 3D geometry does not add any value to anybody, whatsoever!

That may sound like a provocative statement, but this humorous anecdote from clientcopia.com is a great example that not only is visualization not enough, it can be downright confusing.

Humor aside, it is not enough to simply look at a model on the screen, you need to learn something about that model. That model needs to tell you a story. So what matters most is context. When you can add additional product information to support the geometry, and can convey what should be done with that part and the ones around it, then you can tell a story and you can provide real value. The challenge is not so much about creating the story – because everybody has a story to tell – the challenge is having a way to tell a great story. You need a tool that is simple enough so anybody can create the context, in a very short amount of time, keep it up to date as the product information changes, and deliver that story in a variety of compelling ways.

3DVIA Composer is the superior way to use your 3D CAD data to tell great stories and to keep them up to date. That way, the next time your client looks over your shoulder, instead of being the subject for funny blog post, with 3DVIA Composer your client would simply say, “I get it.”