2.2 File Menu Options
In the File menu, you can open a variety of file formats, save your models
into a variety of formats, and print.
- The Part Viewer reads in HSF, HMF, STL, OBJ,
and PLY files.
- The Part Viewer can also read in the following image formats: JPEG,
BMP, PNG, TIFF, and GIF.
- If running a version of the Part Viewer with the appropriate RealDWG
import libraries built in, you can open DWG and DXF files.
For your convenience, a set of demonstration HSFs is included on this distribution.
They are separated into industry specific folders located in the datasets package, which is available for download from the Tech Soft 3D Developer Zone.
2.2.1 Saving Files
The Partviewer allows you to save models as
- HSF: Saving Files as HOOPS Stream Files
will create a compressed file of the graphical data within the scene.
To ensure that Levels of Details (LODs) of objects in the scene are included
in the HSF you must tell HOOPS to generate LODs for the scene. This is
automatically done by turning on Levels of Detail when you set a constant
framerate via the Frame Rate Options dialog in the view menu.
- HMF: Saving Files as HOOPS Meta Files will
create an uncompressed text file describing the graphical data within
the scene.
- HTML : This creates both a HTML page and a HSF which you can
then post to your website as live 3D data. The HTML page has an embedded
HOOPS 3D Control which will stream the HSF from either a local disk or
a website. The embedded object will, behind the scenes, download and install
the HOOPS 3D Control if it is not already installed on the machine reading
the webpage. This means that developers simply need to put the HTML and
HSF file on their Website and any user of MSIE can view the model over
the web by simply pointing their browser to the page's URL.
- EMF (Windows Encapsulated Metafiles): These files can be easily
imported into any standard windows application. EMF output is used when
you 'Copy to Clipboard'.
- JPEG: These image files can be used to bring any of the data
into any of the standard image editing software.
- BMP: These image files can be used to bring any of the data into
any of the standard image editing software.
- GIF: These image files can be used to bring any of the data into
any of the standard image editing software.
- TIFF: These image files can be used to bring any of the data
into any of the standard image editing software.
- BHV: Saves the animation data of the scene in a a separate file
as a collection of XML tags
- PS: Outputs the scene as a Postscript file
- HP: Outputs the scene as an HPGL/2 Plot file
- CGM: Outputs the scene as a CGM Metafile
- PDF (2D) : Outputs the scene as a 2D PDF file.
- PDF (3D) : Outputs the scene as a 3D PDF file. Note: this
will only work for a partviewer with U3D capabilities compiled into it.
- U3D : Outputs the scene as a U3D file. Note: this will
only work for a partviewer with U3D capabilities compiled into it.
2.2.3 Creating HTML Pages
HTML pages are created simply by saving the file as a HTML page. When you
save a file as a HTML page two files will be created, a HTML file which
references a newly created HSF file with the exact same filename. To publish
your model to the web, simply copy both these files to your web site. The
HTML page uses the HOOPS 3D ActiveX control which, if not already installed
on your system, will be automatically downloaded and installed on your system
when you view this HTML page. By default, the Part Viewer does not include
Levels of Detail (LODs) in the HSF. Since LODs are ordered in the front
of the file and are much smaller than the original objects they represent
it is very beneficial to have LODs in the HSF. Through streaming the end-user
can get a full, albeit coarse, representation of the scene even though only
5% of the total file may have been received. You can generate LODs for your
scene by turning on Constant Frame Rates.
2.2.4 Printing/Print Preview/Print Setup/Print
Options
The application supports standard Windows GDI Printing and Print Preview.
It is also possible to set various options via the Print Options dialog;
you can specify the resolution at which to print rastered images (up to
the printer's maximum), you can force the image into grayscale, and you
can break the image up into smaller installments so that the printer memory
is not overloaded (this comes at the price of speed).
Although not currently implemented in this version of the application,
developers could easily extend the output formats to include HPGL, Postscript,
and CGM files.