PDF, CAD rendering and HTML5

by Oleg on June 19, 2011 · View Comments

I’m spending this weekend in Israel these days. My visit is mostly personal because of Bar Mitzvah of my older son, Jonathan. At the same time, I had a chance to have a lunch and interesting conversation with David Levin, founder of LEDAS, the person behind PLM portal isicad.ru and the author of two popular blogs – DL (in Russian) and Not just Russian CAD/PLM. Because of few travel, I had during the last few weeks, the number of unread RSS messages in my reader grown a bit. I was screening them during the last evening. One of them in RWW blog caught my attention - Mozilla is woking on a code allowing native rendering of PDF files within HTML5.

Mozilla is working on technology that will allow PDF documents to be rendered within the browser, rather than utilizing a browser plug-in or an external app to open them. On his blog, Mozilla researcher Andreas Gal has described the project to build a PDF reader in HTML5 and JavaScript.

It made me think about few things: PDF rendering in PLM projects, 3D PDF, and CAD rendering in HTML5.

PDF  and 3D PDF files rendering

PDF used by lots engineering and manufacturing companies as a de-facto standard for neutral format representation. Many applications developed in this space used PDF rendering for multiple purposes. How future broader usage of HTML5 can change existing projects, plug-ins and other applications? This is an interesting question to ask, in my view. The topic of 3D PDF required some validation too. After Adobe lost their interest in PDF and moved this business to TechSoft, there still many companies thinking about 3D PDF rendering. What happens with them and how future HTML5 revolution can change them?

CAD Files Rendering in HTML5

This topic seems to even more interesting that PDF for a long run. How we will be able to render CAD drawings and models in the future in HTML file compliant browsers? Would it be possible to develop a better rendering and lightweight technology for rendering? What will be the dynamic and the opportunity to create HTML5 based rendering and viewing services?. Will changing interest to Flash (caused by the absence of Flash support in Apple tables) drive some additional interesting to HTML5 based rendering? What future technologies will hold in this space?

What is my conclusion? I think, some shakeup is going to happen within a browser based applications. New devices and standards going to drive some changes. Higher diversification of platforms and devices (especially tablet devices) creates additional opportunities here. I’d be interested to know more about new technologies and product developing coming this space.

Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Tagged as: 3D PDF, CAD, HTML5, PDF, Vewers

  • Khattar31

    Would a PDF be able to render/ capture the scale of a drawing. This is exactly the reason why enterprises still prefer to you DWF, or DWG.

  • beyondplm

    My take is different. I think, the increased demand for web and mobile will make viewers more efficient. That's why, I think, HTML5 option will be valid to consider. Just my opinion, of course.

  • jim_merry

    This planned support of PDF natively in the browser by Mozilla is a great example of the power of open format specifications. I do wonder how much utility simple rendering of PDF will deliver to enterprise-class document workflows where advanced features like security, data capture and client-side business logic are required. Also it will be interesting to see which version of PDF they support, especially with regard to any potential 3D support as tessellated data is part of the current ISO 32000:1 spec and B-Rep via PRC is part of the PDF-E variant working through ISO now and targeting full convergence with PDF ISO 32000:2.  Perhaps Mozilla will implement more advanced 3D interaction modes in their browser based implementation than you get with the Adobe Reader, although it seems that level of sophistication may require quite an investment on their part. 

  • beyondplm

    Jim, thanks for commenting! I think, points you made are important. Existing PDF-based projects use lots of this stuff and devil is in details. However, I think the weight of native rendering in HTML-based user interfaces will increase in coming years. Best, oleg

  • Hemboy

    Oleg - very interesting thoughts. Yes, PDF rendering is an important concept and the drawing files you mentioned, all need to be shown to the users in neutral format. The challenge is how is the software going to convert 3D pdfs, 2D pfs (big big size drawings) in the browser itself. I remember in one of our PLM implementation, my customer paid for a separate PDF rendering software and asked us to integrate that software with PLM. Now, if PDF rendering comes up in browser itself by default, then the cost is definitely going to be less, I dont know about performance. Hope this would have got solved. I am sure this is the need of the hour! I am sure mozilla is going to extend this rendering concept to write/modify PDF as well. This way, PLM users can read and modify the PDFs (3D,2D,etc) and check them back into PLM as revisions.

  • beyondplm

    Hemboy, thanks for your comment! You nailed it down. The question when/how vendors will be able to support it. The path seems to me as to move vendor viewers to stream information in a browser and to render that. At the same time, a large amount of PDF content, can make PDF option interesting and useful. Best, Oleg

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