More and more companies are designing products in 3D and using rich 3D CAD data across the entire product lifecycle, from concept to design, simulation, manufacturing, documentation and maintenance.  While 3D CAD data is incredibly powerful, making full use of it throughout your organization is easier said than done.  

To solve these issues, organizations turn to a wide range of applications from third-party vendors to better leverage CAD data at one or multiple stages of their workflows, yet the results are often disappointing. Licensing many “one-size-fits-all” applications from various vendors can cause: 

• Disconnected Data – different formats, requiring manual entry and conversions 

• Constant, Unfulfilled Feature Requests – waiting for each application to be tailored to your needs, often taking months if it happens at all 

• Unhelpful New Releases – version issues that break workflows without adding the functionality you actually need. 

• Ever-Increasing Prices 

• Compatibility Issues – even staying with a version you're happy with requires constant testing 

Unfortunately, the applications you licensed to unlock your data end up slowing down workflows and costing a fortune.  

The solution for many organizations is to build or expand their own 3D applications, perfectly tailored to their needs and customizable on the fly, with complete control over the costs. Fortunately, it has never been easier to develop your own 3D applications in-house, even with smaller developer teams and limited resources. Technologies like Vibe Coding and other AI powered techniques make building applications with preexisting industrial tools easier than ever. The key is to leverage market-tested Software Development Toolkits (SDKs) from trusted vendors like Tech Soft 3D. 

Here are 10 examples of internal applications or application features you can build instead of buy. We discuss how they can benefit your workflows and the tools that exist that enable you to access proven functionality without developing from scratch. 

Application/Feature 1: 3D CAD Data Exchange Throughout the Organization 

Taking native data from applications such as CATIA, NX, Creo, or SOLIDWORKS and converting it into neutral formats like STEP for internal use is an extremely common. As a result, most companies that work with 3D data already have some workflows involving CAD data exchange. Although many viewers and CAD systems can read and write some range of formats, these can be insufficient for your needs.  

Tech Soft 3D toolkits can provide a fully customizable CAD data conversion component to any application that works with 3D data. HOOPS Exchange supports CAD data access for 30+ of the most popular formats with unmatched speed and accuracy; the SDK allows you to build an internal application adaptable to any workflow and use case, rather than waiting on a vendor's roadmap to catch up to yours.  

Since the toolkit is licensed company-wide, you can distribute your application to every employee and partner company at no additional cost. From this foundation, custom software can convert CAD data into a specific format like STEP without needing licenses from the original CAD vendors, with support for automatic batch conversion across multiple datasets.   

HOOPS Exchange ships with a sample application called "ImportExport." Users can launch it from a Windows or Linux command prompt with arguments like “Shaft.CATPart” and “Shaft.STEP”, and the executable converts the CAD data from CATIA to STEP. 

The sample application “ImportExport” can be edited and compiled f you need specific behavior before or after conversion. The sample offers a compact Main function, about a page long, using three main API calls: sImport and sExport define the input and output files, and “Convert” is called with sImport as the first argument and sExport as the second.  

Application/Feature 2: A 3D CAD Web Viewer 

Any organization working with 3D data will benefit from a powerful visualization tool, and a web-native 3D CAD viewer allows you to display native data from CATIA, NX, Creo, SOLIDWORKS, and others directly in a browser.  

When done well, a CAD viewer application or feature allows teams to access the latest versions of 3D data as soon as it's available, with no need to convert it to an intermediate format or save it elsewhere first. By building your own application with a web viewer, you ensure full control over the development process, features, data, and costs, no matter which parts of the company will use it.  

HOOPS Visualize for Web is Tech Soft 3D’s graphics engine that enables you to integrate this functionality into internal applications without building it from scratch. From this foundation, you can add and customize specific features as needed, like complex dimension measurement tools, rather than requesting them from a vendor and waiting.  

HOOPS Visualize for Web includes a "Quick Start" folder so you can try the features immediately. It's a client-server system, meaning CAD processing generally happens on the server, and results are viewed on the client. The Quick Start folder includes a simple start_server.bat script to spin up a local server on your PC, simulating a client-server environment. Once the server is running, you can view a CAD part or assembly file just by dragging and dropping it onto convert.bat. 

From there, you can view your native CAD data right in a browser, complete with features like the model tree, selection, and cutting planes. Getting this far requires no programming, with the toolkit providing comprehensive engineering and manufacturing features right out of the box. From here, you and your development team can extend it further with JavaScript to build the additional functionality specific to your needs.  

If you are interested in the details of “Quick start”, refer to the following document: 

https://docs.techsoft3d.com/hoops/visualize-web/overview/quickstart.html 

Application/Feature 3: 3D Viewing Windows Within Existing Business Applications 

There are many circumstances where you may not need a fully-fledged 3D application, but still want teams to be able to quickly view CAD models. A purchasing agent, for example, placing an order with a supplier based on a part number, may get real value from a quick look at the 3D shape. Native CAD data can't be read directly inside most business applications, but it can be converted to HTML and embedded instead. This allows teams to check a 3D shape directly in their browser without relying on external CAD applications. 

Organizations that use HOOPS Exchange as a foundation to manage CAD data access in their internal applications can take advantage of the export function to turn their 3D models into a file usable by many common business applications.  

You see this for yourself in the “Export 3D to HTML” sample application to export HTML from a native CAD file. Perform this conversion from the command line with a compiled executable. The result displays right in the browser (like displayed below), and unlike the client-server setup for a 3D CAD Web viewer like we just described, this works as a standalone HTML file, making it easy to drop 3D views into existing business systems.