Interoperability · 3D PDF / PRC
3D PDF / PRC — the document spoke
For the workflows where the deliverable is a document: design reviews, archives, tech pubs, sign-offs. NativeCAD writes ISO 14739-1 PRC and embeds it in a PDF you can rotate in Acrobat — no CAD seat on the receiving end. The 3D-PDF gallery is this exporter's own output.
Export — cad_export_body format:"pdf" | "prc"
pdf writes the full rotatable document; prc writes the bare PRC stream
for pipelines that do their own PDF assembly. Both carry the tessellated geometry with the same
naming as every other spoke.
| Option | Kind | What it does |
|---|---|---|
pmiFrom | behavior | Path to an AP242 STEP file whose graphical PMI — leaders, extension lines, callout glyph outlines — is read and written into the PRC as markup entities, with its saved cameras added to the PDF view list. Usually the same file the body was imported from. Omit it and you get clean geometry: PMI is opt-in, never baggage. |
tolerance / maxTriangles | speed | The standard tessellation dials. |
of | skips translation | One named body, or the whole document. |
Try it
PDF nativecad-plate.pdf 69 KB PRC nativecad-plate.prc 67 KB
The kernel-authored sample plate as a rotatable 3D PDF — open it in Acrobat, not a browser preview — and the bare PRC stream beside it.
Roadmap: PDF/A-3 archival container with the source AP242 STEP
and validation report embedded — the LOTAR pattern · semantic PMI as structured PRC
attributes, not just pictures · exact B-rep PRC for archival-grade output
· AP242 tessellated-geometry ingest.