Deep Exploration

CADalyst, Dec, 2004

Right Hemisphere

Price: $149 Deep Exploration, $495 CADtools, $595 CoreCAD, $595 Illustration,

$149 Deep Publish

510.818.2880

www.righthemisphere.com

Deep Exploration is a stand-alone application used to manage 2D, 3D, animation, video, and audio assets that reside on a computer or network. Deep Exploration offers very good depth of features, only a few of which we can touch on here. Tools allow users to search, view, translate, optimize, animate, and publish in a range of formats. Deep Exploration modules are available for industry-specific translation, authoring, and publishing. We looked at Right Hemisphere's Deep Exploration with the CADtools module, the CoreCAD module, and the Illustration module, along with the separate Deep Publish application. Right Hemisphere also offers other applications that will interest many organizations, though they're beyond the scope of this particular article.

Deep Exploration loads and displays, including thumbnails, almost any 2D or 3D file format, including 3ds max, Maya, LightWave, SOFTIMAGE 3D, SOFTIMAGE|XSI, and Adobe Photoshop. You can translate between 2D and 3D file formats and scenes with animation, and modify and save 3D file attributes such as UV maps, textures, and geometry transformations. In addition, you can publish 3D content for Web-based presentations and create and edit keyframe animation of 3D models for compelling presentations. Grouping and hierarchy tools are provided to easily manage complex models, and clipping planes are supported for creating cross sections to better illustrate 3D models.

This is all accomplished in an easy-to-use interface that emulates Windows Explorer. A free viewer, Deep View, is available for viewing files that originated in Deep Exploration.

The Deep Publish application lets users share and use complex engineering and animation data in sales presentations, training material, and technical documentation, as well as in online and printed catalogs. Deep Publish provides a way to insert 3D into PowerPoint, Word, and Excel from within the Office application, and supports 3D animation with playback options. Inserted 3D content is compressed without loss of visual quality.

During the course of evaluating Right Hemisphere Deep Exploration 3.5, we received a prerelease version of the CoreCAD module that supports files from SolidWorks 2005--this release should be available by the time this article is published. Using the updated converters, the SolidWorks 2005 Explode Assembly became a 633KB RH file in 1.5 seconds. The SeaScooter assembly--a larger and more complex model--was converted to a 2.58MB RH file in 2 seconds. The Hotel Model drawing from AutoCAD 2005 opened and converted in a quick 6 seconds into a 700KB RH file. Deep Exploration couldn't open the AutoCAD 2005 Welding Fixture Model correctly, as was true of many applications in this article. The opened file showed only the dimensioning, without any of the real geometry visible. Apart from this model, conversions were fast, and the resulting files were relatively compact.

Right Hemisphere has licensed its Deep Exploration technology to EON Reality, which has incorporated it into the EON CAD product.

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