# Technical Overview

HOOPS Exchange is an SDK designed for the development of 3D engineering applications that require access to and reuse of 3D data created by CAD and BIM design applications.

Through a single interface, HOOPS Exchange facilitates the Import, Adapt, and Export of 3D data from more than 30 native and standard formats, including:

> - MCAD space: CATIA, NX, Creo, SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, Solid Edge, JT, STEP, glTF, OBJ, 3MF, IGES
> - AEC/BIM space: Revit, Navisworks, IFC, and DWG

The 3D data model at the core of HOOPS Exchange is the ISO-certified format PRC (ISO 14739-1:2014), which provides support for engineering concepts like Assembly Tree, Topology & Geometry, Product and Manufacturing Information, and Views.

Developers can define their 3D model via an extensive API or by providing a CAD file such as STEP or JT. Once the model is defined, it’s easy to export the model into any of the supported formats with the richness of the source data maintained.

Compatible with Desktop, Mobile, and Web platforms, HOOPS Exchange can integrate seamlessly into various applications in the CAD, CAE/Analysis, CAM, Manufacturing as a Service, CMM, PLM/Viewing, Digital Factory, Architecture, Civil Applications markets, and more. It addresses a variety of needs and workflows, encompassing Visualization, Design, Analysis, Document Management, Collaboration, Design Review, Quotation, 3D Printing, Manufacturing, AR/VR, and beyond.

Featuring a versatile structure capable of handling diverse data types from various formats, HOOPS Exchange supports Assembly and Parts structures, Exact Geometry: Boundary Representation (B-rep) - Tessellation, Configurations, Meta-Data, Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI), Views, Markups, Design Features, and more.

HOOPS Exchange is a highly customizable API available on different development platforms, designed to seamlessly integrate into your application, whether or not utilizing a modeling kernel. It offers a set of geometric functions for querying your models and adapting the geometry to meet your requirements. The API can generate various types of tessellation, repair, sew, heal inconsistent geometries, adapt B-rep definition & surfaces for reuse by different modelers. Additionally, it can evaluate and project points on surfaces and compute Physical Properties.

Finally, HOOPS Exchange enables you to export your 3D model in memory to the most common standard formats, including STEP, JT, 3D PDF, STL, glTF, and more.

## Integration Workflows

HOOPS Exchange supports both direct and indirect integrations.

A direct integration means parsing entities to access the assembly tree structure, B-Rep, mesh, PMI, views, metadata, and more. All the data from the CAD model is directly stored in the PRC format. This information can then be used to inspect the model data or to provide a feature-rich experience in your end-user application.

An indirect integration means parsing entities to access the assembly tree structure, B-Rep, tessellation, PMI, views, metadata, and more, but the geometry and mesh are written in a different format. The assembly tree, views, metadata, and other elements are then mapped to this new geometrical kernel by HOOPS Exchange. This information can be used to inspect the model data or to provide a feature-rich experience in your end-user application, while also benefiting from your preferred geometrical kernel, such as Parasolid, ACIS, or Open Cascade. See the HOOPS Exchange for Parasolid Developers section of our documentation for a more detailed explanation of indirect integration with the Parasolid geometrical kernel.

See Basic Operations for more details on these integration approaches.

## Advanced Publishing to 3D PDF

The Advanced Publishing module can embed your model into a PDF file in full 3D.

HOOPS Exchange is the only SDK with functions based on the core technologies used in Acrobat Reader. Advanced Publishing has additional functionality that enables the creation of rich, interactive PDF documents. You can do this either by populating a pre-existing PDF template or by using the APIs to create a PDF from scratch. Extensive APIs are made available to add interactivity to the PDF document. For example, developers can add events to a document’s text that, when clicked, will cause a particular part of the 3D model to be highlighted.

By leveraging and extending the built-in features of Adobe Reader and the PRC file format, HOOPS Exchange enables developers to create advanced interactive 3D PDFs with minimal time and effort.

3D data can be authored using the Publish API, or it can be imported from a number of native CAD file formats. Depending on the import file format, 3D models loaded with Advanced Publishing typically contain the following elements: assembly trees, boundary representation, tessellation, markup (such as PMI), views, and animations.

After loading the model, of the rotation, zoom, and pan controls are already in place - this gives your end users a rich set of features for manipulating 3D models with no additional effort from your development team.

## Discover More

If you want to know more about HOOPS Exchange, we invite you now to delve into the CAD formats supported by HOOPS Exchange.

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