Calling 3DVIA Mobile For The iPhone

Sure, your iPhone rocks as a smart device and the burgeoning library of apps means there are games and gadgets galore to make your day easier and keep you entertained. But what about the device becoming an extension of your day-to-day engineering work? It can, thanks to a number of new iPhone apps–the latest being 3DVIA Mobile, which lets users search, share and interact with the vast library of 3-D images found on 3DVIA.com.

3DVIA, a division of Dassault Systemes, is an online platform designed to promote the use of 3-D content and help deliver online 3-D experiences. Just like the online application, 3DVIA Mobile users will be able to search through the thousands of models created by the 120,000 members of the 3DVIA.com community and content partners as well as select, spin, pan, zoom and inspect 3-D models in real time. Along with the dozens of end-user applications for 3DVIA Mobile, officials say the tool is a natural collaboration and visualization platform for engineers looking to share and work together on 3-D models while out in the field. “It’s a practical application for when someone is in the field or out of office, away from their desktop and they quickly want to view a piece of content or collaborate with someone by showing them,” explains David Laubner, 3DVIA’s director of product marketing.

The app, available on the iTunes store, initially for free and eventually for $1.99, also has a “collage” feature that lets iPhone users augment photos with highly realistic 3-D models from the 3DVIA.com site or from their own libraries. While a consumer might use this capability to snap a picture of their living room and overlay 3-D images of couch choices to get a feel for the room, there are engineering applications as well. Someone who designs laptops, for example, could take a picture of a relevant environment-a desktop, for example-and overlay the 3-D model of the design-in-process to see how it fits.

Dassault/3DVIA is not the only vendor rolling out design apps for the iPhone. Autodesk just last week released SketchBook Mobile, a version of its painting and drawing tool for the Apple platform.