Release Notes

License Key

HOOPS Exchange only requires a new license key if you are currently using a key which was generated for a prior major version. For example, developers upgrading from 2018 to 2018 SP1 may use the same key, but those upgrading from 2018 to 2019 need to generate a new key. Please visit the HOOPS Exchange download page if you need to generate a new key. The key is delivered in the file include/hoops_license.h. Once you have generated a new key, you should copy the file to <EXCHANGE_INSTALL_DIR>/include/.

The expiration date for the generated license key is tied to your contract with Tech Soft 3D. If you have signed a license agreement for HOOPS Exchange, then the license key that is generated will be a perpetual (non-expiring) license key. If you are evaluating HOOPS Exchange, then the license key will expire when your evaluation expires. Evaluation license keys will expire at the end of the evaluation period and are not suitable for production software. Any software that uses an evaluation license key will no longer work after the evaluation period.

HOOPS Exchange releases are not binary compatible with older releases. You must recompile your application when updating to a new version of HOOPS Exchange. Please see Distributing Your Application section for an up-to-date list of binaries required for distribution.

Note

Visit our Developer Support page to familiarize yourself with support procedures, including deprecated functionality.

HOOPS Exchange 2023

Welcome to our new documentation

We are pleased to announce the release of our new documentation!

It comes with a new look-and-feel and a better navigation interface. The search feature is faster now. And in the next releases, we will be adding more fine-grained controls such as whole-word match and fuzzy search. More to come!

Format Updates

Format

Updated Version

Revit DGN

2023 7

Due to actual release dates from the CAD editors, the below format updates will be delivered with HE 2023 U1 (mid-Feb. 2022):

  • NX 2022 (Dec. 2022 version)

  • Parasolid 35.0

  • Solid Edge 2023

  • SolidWorks 2023

See also

New Format

HOOPS Exchange now supports the reading of Microstation DGN.

As an alpha version of the reader, HOOPS Exchange supports reading of DGN format version 7 only and with a limited set of entities.

Platform Changes

Migration to Visual Studio 2019

On Windows, HOOPS Exchange migrated its compiler to Visual Studio 2019 (previously 2015). Following Microsoft’s Documentation on binary compatibility, this change implies an update to the required MSVC redistributables.

HOOPS Exchange being an explicitely shared library, the impact occurs at runtime. Any application running HOOPS Exchange must have at least Visual Studio 2019 redistributable.

Visual Studio solution and project files for sample code have been upgraded to Visual Studio 2019 as well. Thus, compiling our samples requires Visual Studio 2019.

Note

Starting in Windows 10 version 2004 (build 19041), the printf family of functions prints exactly representable floating point numbers according to the IEEE 754 rules for rounding. This change affects programs built using Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 and later. To preserve the previous change, our code as well as the samples are linked against legacy_stdio_float_rounding.obj. See MSVC Link options for more.

See also

Format Improvements

Creo

Improved Flexible Element Support

CREO components can be defined as flexible elements in the context of an assembly. A flexible component may have different caracteristics to fit to the assembly position (ie: a spring may have a particular length as well as position). Flexible elements were partially supported in previous versions of HOOPS Exchange and the 2023 version is introducing several enhancements to improve the model fidelity by supporting more definition cases and positions.

Note that flexible elements are read as Brep models, and that the CREO version must be 4 or above.

Support of External Files for CREO Assemblies (Context: CREO Assembly That References Native Files From Other CAD Formats, Like CV5, STEP)

CAD designers have the ability to reference external native CAD components within an assembly to help them design their product. The CAD formats supported by CREO as external components are Catia V5, Inventor, NX, SolidWorks. When referenced by the assembly, these external components are converter into a .CREO file.

HOOPS Exchange 2023 is now supporting these external components to improve the reading process and make all the assembly components accessible afterwards.

Inventor

Support of Assemblies Suppressed Parts

Suppressing components from an assembly is a comon way of designing assemblies. In previous Hoops Exchange versions, the suppressed components were read, leading to extra-components being loaded and displayed.

By supporting this information, the reading of Inventor assemblies is more accurate.

Support of Coordinates Systems

The coordinates systems that are defined in parts can be used to help the design and also to define references that are meant to be used in downstream applications, such as manufacturing for example. Retrieving the coordinates systems will help downstream applications to directly benefit from already existing information, without having to recreate them manually.

Support of Physical Materials

The physical material information that Hoops Exchange is now supporting (material name, material density, Poisson ratio, Young modulus) is helping applications like Analysis, Manufacturing… to directly access to these key information from the native CAD part, without having to recreate them manually.

glTF

Support of New Extensions

We now support the following glTF extensions:

  • Clearcoat

  • Material_specular

  • Specular_Glossiness

SolidWorks

Support of Decals (Simple cases)

The support of visual models’ appearances (material, textures, decals) is meant for high fidelity rendering and full-color printing of parts. This will serve PLM/Visualization as well as Manufacturing as a Service / 3D Printing applications. Hoops Exchange 2023 is introducing the support of SolidWorks Decals as a Prototype.

Simple decals are supported: Decal defined as a “Label” projection, if not overlapping multiple surfaces. Position and scale is also supported.

Since this is a first version, there are some limitations that are currently under development.

Support of K-Factors for Sub-Nodes

Accessing the K-Factor from the native CAD model is helping the sheet metal software to generate unfolded part from the designed model, and generate cutting and bending procedure and machine programs.

The K-Factor is a value that is used to calculate material elongation that is happening when a part is folded or unfolded and therefore dimensional variations between the designed model and the unfolded one.

K-factor was already supported for the native SolidWorks parts and this improvement is about supporting more possible cases regarding how the K-factor can be defined in SolidWorks.

Other Improvements

Ability to Cancel Hidden Line Removal Calculation

The calculation of “Hidden lines removal” for complex models can take a significant time.

The ability to cancel this function will help users that don’t want to wait the result.


Older Versions