Release Notes

CAD Exchanger

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

What's New

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

Introduction

The CAD Exchanger application (GUI and CLI, or Command Line Interface) provides an environment for importing, visualizing and exporting 3D models in different CAD formats. Evaluation version may be used for a limited period of time, for production license please send an email to info@cadexchanger.com.

GUI and CLI are based on CAD Exchanger SDK (Software Development Kit), a set of software libraries, that can be integrated into customers' applications to enable conversion of supported CAD formats.

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 when reading; R2.0 - R20.0 when writing)	*.sat	Yes	Yes
Parasolid (v0.15 - v20.0)	.x_t, .x_b, .xmt_txt, .xmt_bin	Yes	Yes
STL	*.stl	Yes	Yes
VRML 2.0 (1997)	*.wrl		Yes
X3D	*.x3d		Yes
BRep	*.brep	Yes	Yes

The up-to-date list of supported formats is displayed on the Start Page when the CAD Exchanger starts.

System Requirements

Hardware:

Intel* Pentium* 4 processor family and higher, of 32 and 64 bit architecture. Multi-core system is recommended for better performance;
Compatible non-Intel processor.

Operating systems:

Microsoft* Windows XP*, Windows Vista*, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003*, or Windows Server 2008*;
Linux* operating systems with kernel version >= 2.6.18 and glibc version >= 2.5 (e.g. RHEL5.x).

Compilers (when using CAD Exchanger SDK):

Windows 32 bit: Visual Studio 2008 SP1, 2010 SP1;
Windows 64 bit: Visual Studio 2010 SP1;
Linux 32 bit: gcc 4.x;
Linux 64 bit: gcc 4.x.

Installation Notes

Before installing a new version 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 can be impossible. For instance, trying to export a model imported from STL to IGES or STEP is impossible due to fundamental differences between formats (triangles in STL and surfaces and curves in IGES or STEP).
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.
File names may not contain non-ASCII symbols.

ACIS:

File units are ignored, the model is translated as if it were in millimeters;
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.

Parasolid:

Extremely rare geometric types (parabola, hyperbola, paracurve, cpc, patch_bound, silhouette, offset_curve, pe_curve, blended_vertex, parasurf, pipe, parasurf, etc) are not supported by importer and will be ignored if met. Currently no examples of such types have been encountered so far;
Offset surfaces on C0-continuous B-Splines may sometimes fail when underlying surface cannot be corrected to C1.
The exporter always encodes edges as accurate ones and therefore does not create p-curves even if deviation between original 3D curve and pcurves exceeds edge tolerance. Depending on this actual deviation some 3rd party viewers may fail to visualize such entities.
The exporter writes default values of spatial tolerances in edges regardless of real model accuracy.

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.