A Web-Based Solution Supporting CAD Assembly Model Exploration and Analysis

In the last decades, digital 3D models have substituted 2D technical drawings for the design and development of mechanical products. This results in a huge amount of CAD (computer-aided design) models available in legacy and Web repositories. 3D CAD models are now the reference product specification, and are frequently exchanged with customers and companies collaborating in the product development. In addition, this great amount of data can be exploited by scientists to test and evaluate their research results. Therefore, the visualization and analysis of CAD models from everywhere and through any device are particularly useful for both engineers and researchers. To answer this need, this paper presents a web-based solution exploiting the X3D capabilities for the direct visualization in the Web browser of CAD assemblies and of some of their characteristics remotely computed by the application on user demand.