The Universal Viewer

Your engineering team has spent weeks working on the design of the latest product concept.  The concept design has been made using high-end CAD modeling tools that allow sophisticated 3D renderings.  The problem now is how to share the new design with the rest of the enterprise.  How can the concept design model be distributed for comment without requiring the original expensive authoring application be installed on everyone’s desk that may want to take a look at the current product direction?

Screenshots.  A live presentation or webinar.  These are some workarounds to disseminate the data, but they don’t offer any degree of interactivity for controlling how the model is to be visualized.

The problem gets more complex in larger organizations where different groups have adopted different sets of authoring tools.  In those cases, sharing files and data for collaboration is limited because people may have access to data files but they don’t have access to the authoring application to view them.

Another problem associated with complex authoring applications is that these feature-rich tools often require highly trained users.  These kinds of applications are often not very approachable by casual users or those who may just need to view an existing data model.  In these cases, even if the application is available to a user, it may not be of much use.

A better solution is to use a Universal Viewer.  A Universal Viewer is a single low-cost application that presents a consistent and easy-to-use interface for viewing most commonly used file formats.

In collaboration with Spicer, Formtek has created the Formtek View application.  View is a true Universal Viewer that is web-based.  It is able to view most CAD, graphics and Office documents.  In all, more than 200 file formats are supported.  View’s tight integration with the Formtek | Orion data repository allows an organization to tightly secure and correctly disseminate documents and files on an Intranet or the Internet; and across the enterprise and with partners.

Universal viewing with Formtek | View is cost-effective and convenient.  Web-based access allows users access from any networked client without a requirement for having supporting applications already installed on the workstation where the data is viewed.

Formtek | View is very flexible and customizable.  View comes with an out-of-the-box configuration using high-frequency industry-standard viewing operations that are called out for use from an easy-to-access toolbar.  The core of View is a set of programmable ActiveX components.  By changing the usage of the ActiveX components, it’s possible to fairly easily customize your own viewer application, exposing the operations most commonly needed for your business processes.