CAD Assistant

About CAD Assistant

OPEN CASCADE CAD Assistant for Android is an offline viewer and converter for 3D CAD and mesh models.

If you wish to use this technology for development of customized solutions for your business, contact us at:
https://www.opencascade.com/contact

Basic CAD model viewing and converting

Basic functionality is provided by CAD Data Exchange component of Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT).
The supported file formats and data are:
- BREP: native OCCT format for shape geometry, topology, and assembly structure.
- IGES (5.1 and 5.3): shape geometry, colors, top-level object names, file information.
- STEP (AP203 and AP214): shape geometry, assembly structure, colors, names, validation properties, file information.

Assembly structure of the model can be navigated through the tree browser. The components of the assembly can be hidden or shown as necessary to inspect the model. The selected sub-assembly or part can be queried for its properties.

CAD model (whole or selected part or sub-assembly) can be exported to any of supported CAD or mesh formats.

Viewing mesh data

Additional functionality is viewing of mesh models with associated data, implemented using the mesh visualization component of OCCT.

Supported mesh formats are:
- STL is de-facto standard in 3D printing.
- PLY has capability to store data associated with mesh nodes and elements. If you have in your application a model represented by mesh, it can be saved easily to PLY format and viewed on a tablet. Additional data (RGB color or scalar) can be added to each polygon or node.
- OBJ is standard for 3D animation and supported by most 3D graphics applications.
- JT is ISO standard for efficient visualization of 3D CAD data.
- glTF is an open standard for 3D assets.

CAD Assistant allows you to view the mesh in wireframe, shaded, and shrink view. If mesh contains associated textures, colors, or scalar data, it can be viewed with elements colored according to the selected property. For scalar quantities interactive color scale is shown, providing controls to manipulate the range of displayed quantities.

Common operations

CAD Assistant for Android is optimized for devices with multi-touch screen and provides intuitive manipulation of the 3D view by finger gestures.

Left toolbar provides buttons for fitting model to window and choice of standard views. Settings submenu provides access to viewer and application options, file information, and message log.

Files can be opened from local storage (internal memory or SD card). CAD Assistant integrates with Android so that applications supporting file associations will launch it for opening files of relevant types. For instance, you can open STEP file sent to you by mail by simple click on attachment in mail client.

CAD models can be saved in STEP, IGES, or BREP format as CAD data; CAD and mesh models can be saved in PLY, STL, or OBJ format as polygonal data. Save file dialog also allows saving current image of the model to PNG format. If target directory Mail is selected, the mail client will be automatically started with saved file as attachment.

Supported devices

CAD Assistant has been tested to work on a wide range of modern tablets and smartphones. Note however that it supports only landscape screen orientation and this might be inconvenient on phones.

Application requires OpenGL ES 3.0+ or OpenGL ES 2.0 with GL_OES_element_index_uint extension.

Limitations

Depending on a device, opening large files may take time. Devices with low-range graphic processor could be slow on displaying large models. For large scenes (millions of triangles), the system may kill the application with no warning due to GPU problems. In general, files less than 50 Mb can be considered safe for opening on all devices.

See more at https://www.opencascade.com/content/cad-assistant

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on Google Play or on our User Forum at https://www.opencascade.com/forums/applications