Tech Soft 3D has announced that Epic Games has selected Hoops Exchange to simplify CAD data import into their solution, Datasmith, a collection of tools that allows customers to import pre-constructed scenes or complex assets into Unreal Engine.
Creator of the popular online game Fortnite, Epic Games is also the team behind the real-time 3D creation tool Unreal Engine, which is widely used outside of the video game market.
Customers in the automotive or aerospace industries shared with the company that they found it challenging to get their data into Unreal Engine because CAD data is created for manufacturing and not for interactive visualisation.
To solve this problem, Epic Games decided to build Datasmith, a collection of tools that allows Unreal Engine customers to import pre-constructed scenes or complex assets and assemblies from industry-standard design applications into Unreal Engine, making their workflows easier when it comes to importing and preparing CAD data for visualisation.
Beyond creating a streamlined pipeline for getting content into Unreal Engine, the company aimed to support the widest possible range of 3D design applications and file formats.
To meet this requirement, Epic Games selected Hoops Exchange, an SDK that provides import for over 30 CAD formats, including Catia, Solidworks, Inventor and Revit, on the back end of Datasmith.
The company has reported positive feedback from customers in different industries. Automotive companies, for instance, have said they were able to bring in actual 3D CAD models and interact with them through virtual reality to perform an engineering review.
The virtual workflows, said Tech Soft 3D, have become particularly important over the past few years, as people have been forced to find new ways of working together in response to the disruption of the covid-19 pandemic.
VR use cases also gained in popularity during the pandemic as Teams were working remotely in different locations and had to find a way to collaborate on cars and aircraft and other complex projects.
