Transform digital product catalogs with 3D PDF technology!

Manufacturers have often relied on printed catalogs to market and sell their products. In the world we live in today, the buying process has changed drastically. With the proliferation of digital technologies and the internet, the web has become the primary way of accessing information about products.

Today, product engineers and designers regularly search for product and component information online rather than go through printed or 2D PDF catalogs. This has created a huge demand for 3D product catalogs. In this article, we are going to explore the several advantages 3D product catalogs offer to engineering organizations and manufacturers and how 3D PDF technology has become a very robust, efficient and accessible solution to meet those needs.

Let’s first look into its benefits.

The Many Advantages of Using 3D Digital Product Catalogs

1. Increased user-engagement: 3D product catalogs are much more interactive and user-friendly compared to traditional 2D PDF documents and brochures. By being able to check out the product in 3D, your prospects are much more likely to seek additional information and ultimately make a purchase from you than your competitor who is still stuck with 2D catalog-based marketing.
2. Easily accessible: A 3D digital brochure/ catalog offers a fast, convenient and easy to access way to get product information anytime and from any device
3. Configurable 3DModels: With a 3D digital catalog, product manufacturers can provide multiple configurations of a model for download and be tried out, nabling informed and faster decision making process
4. Lead generation and analytics: 2D catalogs and printed brochures have traditionally remained the primary touchpoint through trade shows and distributors. Once a potential customer takes away the catalog with him, there is no way of knowing how they are engaging with the provided information and planning follow-up actions. With 3D catalogs, lead generation from downloads can be clubbed with powerful analytics to close more deals and grow your business
5. Always up-to-date: Manufacturers can ensure that the design data being provided in the catalog is always the latest one to keep messaging accurate and consistent
6. Improves branding and market reach: The use of 3D catalogs will showcase your business as forward-thinking and client-centric. You also get the ability to scale your marketing efforts with digital content distribution.

What is a 3D PDF?

A simple way to think about 3D PDF is that it is a PDF file that also supports 3D model data. The file extension is still “.pdf” but is much more powerful thanks to its many use cases.

Some of them are:

• Product cataloging – The main focus of this article
• Publishing technical documents like product sheets, leaflets, maintenance manuals for assembly instructions
• Company presentations
• Order forms and quotations

3D PDF format combines 3D data with metadata, videos, text, images, and forms. The beauty of 3D PDF technology is in its simplicity, openness, accessibility, and flexibility.

Let us look in detail the key advantages 3D PDF offers as a digital product cataloging solution.

3D PDF: An ideal solution for creating interactive product catalogs

The PDF file format has become a very standard way to share text and image-rich documents for many years now. It is highly accessible thanks to so many free PDF viewers available in the market today. What if the same PDF file format can be enhanced to support 3D content as well? Powerful right? This is when 3D PDF technology comes into the picture.

3D PDF Benefits: What makes it a great solution for building interactive product catalogs?

1. Based on the very popular PDF file format: As we all are already used to viewing standard text documents in PDF with Adobe Acrobat and other free PDF viewers, getting started with 3D PDF becomes very easy for all.
2. Very functional:It makes it very easy to create and view zoom, rotate and separate key model parts and assemblies in a standard PDF file.
3. Dynamic Java Script: The support for dynamic JavaScript enables addition of special interactions. This can come in handy to see hidden geometry, part labels, and certain annotations.
4. Interconnect with other documents: Easily create hyperlinks to supporting drawings and documents.
5. Supported by CAD and other 3D applications as a file output: All the popular 3D applications allow designs to be exported to 3D PDF format by traversing native data structure through first or third-party plugins
6. Manageable file sizes: With efficient file compression, 3D PDF enables efficient file storage and sharing.
7. Interoperability:Inclusion of PMI and Metadata for full BREP precise model
8. AccessControl: Easily manage access to users with fine-grained permission level
9. Secure: Use of AES-256 bit encryption at the document level to further protect design information
10. Upgradability: You can reprocess older 3D PDFs to include new features.

Wrapping Up!

3D product catalogs offer exciting possibilities for better sales, business growth and organization’s branding. Building such catalogs has never been easier thanks to 3D PDF format. It is simple, open, accessible, and affordable.

We at nCircle Tech can help you with our expertise and experience in making 3D PDF an essential part of your product catalog development workflow.

Let us know if you are looking to develop a 3D PDF publishing feature in the CAD software.