Starting with PDF v1.6, PDF documents are able to contain embedded 3D content in addition to text and UserGuide_Images. The 3D content appears in the document initially as an image. But with a current version of Acrobat Reader, the user is able to activate the integrated 3D viewer to rotate, pan and zoom around the actual 3D data. Publishing in 3D is now practical because of the wide distribution of the Acrobat Reader. Acrobat Reader version 8 or higher is recommended.

Direct output to 3D PDF is supported starting with Open Inventor 7.1. Note that, unlike the vector output classes in HardCopy, these classes output the actual 3D geometry and attributes from the Open Inventor scene graph. The format used in 3D PDF (U3D) is quite compact, but you can also use Open Inventor’s geometry simplification tools to reduce the complexity of the scene before generating the output file.