As part of our ongoing efforts to better serve our partners, we are constantly striving to improve our products – from squashing bugs to adding requested features and formats, this commitment is a key part of our SDK's value. With this in mind, we are excited to share a new addition to one of our toolkits that we have been working on with the help of our friends at NVIDIA.

HOOPS Exchange is proudly offering write support for the Universal Scene Description (USD) format, becoming one of the first engineering-focused SDKs to do so. This new capability will become available with HOOPS Exchange 2025.4.0 as an extension to the toolkit.

This format, originally developed by Pixar, provides users with an easily scalable, interoperable framework to handle complex 3D scenes and is of increasing relevance to engineering workflows. The USD format is leveraged in NVIDIA’s Omniverse, a real-time collaboration and simulation platform, as well as across other areas of animation, visual effects, gaming, and industrial design.

Why is USD Important?

Simply put, the USD format offers a unique blend of capabilities that offer a wide range of collaboration, interoperability, visualization, and data management benefits that have huge potential for our toolkit’s users.

To start, interoperability is a core issue for engineers across industries, with different data needs and applications requiring fast, reliable transfer between formats. This issue is fundamental to what HOOPS Exchange offers developers seamless, accurate data translation capabilities. While we have a soft spot for data translation, the best form of data access is that which doesn’t require translation of any kind, and USD offers better interoperability than many formats operating in similar environments.

USD is frequently used as a bridge between CAD and visualization tools, allowing engineers the opportunity to better integrate 3D models into real-time rendering and simulation environments. The format's ability to handle large-scale environments offers scalability for industrial and architectural projects. For collaboration, the layering and composition system present in the format allows for more efficient design review.

These attributes of the format play a key role in enabling the digital thread. This term refers to the constant, interconnected flow of data throughout a product's lifecycle. USD can support many stages of a products development, from design and collaboration to visualization and simulation. Supporting this digital thread reduces the barriers between workflow stage and departments, improving decision-making, production times, and the final product itself.

What Does This Mean for Engineers Across Different Industries?

As we mentioned, HOOPS Exchange is one of the first engineering-focused toolkits to offer write support for USD. The format is already popular for gaming, animation, and other entertainment industries, and is making exciting inroads into engineering workflows in the CAD, CAM, CAE, PLM, and more. Here, we offer a short breakdown of how the features of USD are uniquely well-suited to engineering application users and thus their developers.

In CAD workflows, USD offers engineers the ability to better visualize CAD models in real-time. These benefits extend into more extensive visualization tools, with the format seamlessly flowing into common visualization tools like Unity, Unreal, and Omniverse. USD supports iterative collaboration, with multi-layered editing empowering multiple teams to make non-destructive changes to components without altering the base design.

The seamless flow of data offered by USD is beneficial to CAM workflows as well, improving production efficiency. The ability to define parametric variations supports automated CAM setups for adaptive machining processes.

For CAE teams, USD offers support for complex simulation environments, including allowing engineers to add their physics-based models to interactive, 3D environments. The same visualization and collaboration attributes present in the format that help their CAD and CAM colleagues apply to those working in CFD, thermal simulations, and more.

USD’s standardized approach to handling 3D assets offers a simple way to track and manage design history. Tracking is everything for PLM, and USD offers engineers a format designed to support their active management of a product's entire lifespan.

Finally, artificial intelligence is never far away from modern conversations, and USD’s neat, structured method of handling data can work well with the logic structure of AI models.

Tech Soft 3D & NVIDIA – A Powerful Partnership for 3D Innovation

Our support for this format would not have been possible without help from our partner, NVIDIA, and their wonderful product team. Currently, NVIDIA’s Omniverse, a platform that leverages the USD format, uses HOOPS Exchange for its CAD Converter Extension.

These interactions are proof of the value of our Strategic Technology Partnerships, with the new support for USD, tangible proof that our partners can feel.

Enabling USD export through HOOPS Exchange opens many doors for developers leveraging our data translation toolkit. This format is the backbone of NVIDIA’s Omniverse and is used widely in other applications. The ability to import CAD models directly into these applications will empower engineers and designers across a wide range of markets to better visualize, simulate, and collaborate with their designs.

We are thrilled to share that NVIDIA will be presenting at our HOOPS Summit on June 4th. This event offers a full day of presentations and networking around engineering technology, with the newest developments in SDKs, AI, and hybrid graphics. You can still register and attend this event by signing up here.

What’s Next for HOOPS Exchange and USD?

This is the first release of this format support and we intend to continue refining and improving. We encourage you to contact us to ask any questions you have about USD support in HOOPS Exchange, or indeed, anything else!

If you’re ready to get started, you can check out this post on our forum for a beginners guide to taking advantage of this capability.