Epic Games switches to HOOPS Exchange to make importing and preparing CAD data easier.
To gamers, Epic Games is often synonymous with Fortnite. To many people in aerospace, automotive, manufacturing and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries, Unreal Engine comes to mind. As the company continues to make its mark in industrial design applications, it has made the switch to Tech Soft 3D’s HOOPS Exchange to enhance and ease CAD data for visualization.
While Unreal Engine, a real-time 3D software platform, has been around since 1998, advances in augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR) outside of gaming created a new door of opportunity. It then created Unreal Studio, a suite of tools for importing CAD, which has led to Unreal Engine being used for everything from designing a manufacturing floor to fueling the HMI development.
Entering new markets also came with finding solutions to new problems. One of the biggest Unreal Engine faced was importing CAD data, which was historically not interactive. The company created tools, called Datasmith, to enable importing complex assemblies or pre-constructed scenes through an SDK data translation vendor. While it streamlined CAD data, it had limitations regarding file formats and design applications.
The move to HOOPS Exchange opened the door to more than 30 CAD formats, including CATIA, Revit and SOLIDWORKS, using a single API. Used by major companies, including Autodesk and Siemens, Hoops Exchange provides software libraries that allow users to use 2D and 3D formats. It reads and converts 3D data into a PRC format that is easy for anyone to use. PRC files feature the defined geometric entities for different mechanical CAD systems, which are stored in the original form. That means not having to worry about lost accuracy or precision. The files are also highly compressible, often 100 times smaller than original CAD files.
Hoops Exchange not only aids developers with 3D visualization but also makes dealing with dense and overwhelming data easier. Whether dealing with parts, topological structures or markup data, it lets software developers enhance workflows from archiving to modeling and visualization.
For Unreal Engine, the latter was especially important. With more people working off-site yet still needing easy ways to collaborate, virtual workflows have become much more mainstream, including the increase of VR. When working on complex projects, the ability to get immersed in the project in real-time enables finding and correcting issues in the design process easier. On the tail-end of a project, marketing teams can have access to the data to create review material and easily obtain imagery.
Epic Games recently released Unreal Engine 5.1. Thanks, in part, to moving to HOOPS Exchange, the company boasts that newest release is more robust and versatile. The new release has a plethora of new and updated features.
