Overview

Welcome to the 3DLive User's Guide. This guide is intended for users who need to become quickly familiar with the 3DLive product.

3DLive in a Nutshell

Welcome to 3DLive, a lightweight application that introduces a breakthrough 3D paradigm for on-line collaborative intelligence, leveraging enterprise 3D and PLM information. 3DLive brings intellectual property (IP) to life in a single, immersive interface that connects the people, processes and products that drive your business.

By combining the universal language of 3D with advanced indexing and search tools, barriers to information sharing and collaboration disappear, and everything from design program updates to supplier meetings to last-minute shop floor changes becomes as fast and easy as surfing the Web.

It enables any individual to instantly search and navigate any PLM information, regardless of location, source or format. On-demand 3D collaboration between users delivers unique breakthroughs for innovative PLM processes in all markets. 3DLive brings the power of PLM to a wide range of users. The 3DLive user experience takes online collaboration to a new level.

Bar

The Bar provides a quick means to search for PLM information as well as quick access to collaborating with the people associated to a part or process currently being examined.


  • Semantic Search enables you to search for objects by defining search criteria for chosen object attributes.
  • Collaborate gives you direct access to the immersive PLM Workplace and access to collaboration functionalities, e.g. chat, share snapshots, work in a co-review.

Compass

One of the main objectives of current 3D PLM software is to achieve a high level of integration of the PLM in all user activities, from navigation to authoring, process and simulation. One aspect of this integration is the transparent accessibility to PLM information at any time on any object.

The Compass has been created to deliver this access to PLM information. When a user needs to access PLM information, he should be able to use the Compass and find that which he needs to know.

The Compass is present in all document windows and is composed of four quadrants (North, East, South, West) and a Play button. All four quadrants work the same way: clicking on a quadrant activates it and changes the visual representation of all 3D objects (color, transparency and texture) depending on criteria specific to the chosen quadrant, the purpose being to focus user attention on potential problems or points to solve.

The Play has been created to simulate animations. When you activate the Play, the currently selected objects are rotated, one by one, in such a way as to simulate an animation, allowing you to view them from multiple perspectives. If no object was selected, the entire set of visible objects is rotated together. The animation continues until you click again on the Play button.

Instant Collaboration

Instant Collaboration enables rapid sharing of data and ideas between all participants across the extended enterprise.

Workplace

The immersed Workplace presents you with information pertinent to the collaboration with colleagues or partners concerned with the objects you are currently viewing.


  • Owners and lockers of objects in the viewing session
  • Recent contacts
  • Buddy lists that you build
  • Co-reviews

Heads-Up Display (HUD)

Collaborative Heads-Up Display (HUD) materializes the collaboration that occurs between two or more users within their session. The concept is to delimit the shared area with the immersed Visor and to provide the tools that allow efficient communication and exchanges regarding product context. The Visor also serves as a preview zone for incoming graphics (e.g. image, geometry snapshot).

Live Applications

Live Application add-ons extend 3DLive functionality. To know which ones are available for a Live SmarTeam connector, see Live Application Availability per 3DLive Connector.

Before Reading this Guide

Before reading this guide you should be familiar with basic concepts such as document windows, standard and view toolbars, which can be found in the Basics section. Therefore, we recommend that you to read the Infrastructure User's Guide that describes generic capabilities common to all Version 6 products. It also describes the general layout of Version 6 and the interoperability between workbenches.

Getting the Most Out of this Guide

To get the most out of this guide, we suggest that you start by reading the Getting Started tutorial, which provides a quick introduction to the essential features of 3DLive using the Live SmarTeam connector.

You should then continue with the User Tasks section. These tasks take you step-by-step through the complete set of delivered functionalities.

The Interface Description section describes the 3DLive interface.

Note: A large proportion of the functionality that is available in 3DLive is common to multiple applications. In the interest of maintaining a high level of information pertinence in the documented tasks, these common tasks have been physically documented only once using images grabbed from a chosen application. Therefore, some images might differ slightly from that which you see on your screen if you are using one of the other applications. Seeing that the main purpose of the images is to supplement the textual information and to give you added help in using the functionality, where images do differ from what you see, we have judged that the minimal differences do not impair in any manner the message intended by the image nor your ability to understand how to use the functionality.