ODA adds full ReCap support to Drawings 2020

The ODA introduces the latest update of the Drawings SDK with support for Autodesk ReCap files

The Open Design Alliance’s roster of members can now develop applications with support for point cloud data from Autodesk ReCap. New viewing tools from the development consortium enable fast visualization with the ability to visualize up to one billion points in under four seconds.

Last fall in Milan at their annual developers’ meeting, the ODA outlined a long menu of capabilities under development by their team including support for Autodesk ReCap, which processes photo/scanner data into usable point clouds for visualization and design work. With the release of the ODA’s Drawings SDK 2020 Update 2, that capability is now available.

ReCap has become a defacto standard for point cloud data, and Neil Peterson, President of the ODA tells us there are a wide range of reasons why CAD users support for ReCap data including the ability to use ReCap data in other point cloud processing tools, to visualize ReCap files within DWG, and use DWG and ReCap data together in context.

Peterson points interested readers to the Laser Scanning Forum for more cases where ReCap is becoming a necessary intermediate format for point cloud data.

More information about the Drawings SDK is available at the ODA site, here.

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The official press release follows:

Scottsdale, AZ: January 29, 2020 – Open Design Alliance (ODA) announced today the release of Drawings SDK 2020 Update 2. Drawings is the industry-standard toolkit for desktop, mobile and web applications that work with .dwg and .dgn data.

“Drawings 2020u2 features full support for Autodesk ReCap files, the standard format for point clouds embedded in .dwg,” commented Neil Peterson, ODA President. “ODA members can now create indexed ReCap files from arbitrary point cloud data and embed them in .dwg. In addition, we support fast visualization with level of detail (LOD)—a twenty-five-gigabyte .rcp file with one billion points can be loaded and visualized in under four seconds.”

Sergey Vishnevetsky, ODA Development Director, said, “The new Drawings release also implements production support for our Common Data Access (CDA) API. CDA allows model hierarchy and property data for .dwg and .dgn to be accessed through a single API, making it convenient to build universal tools that work with multiple data formats in a common manner. CDA is now available for our entire product line, including IFC, Autodesk Revit® files, and Autodesk Navisworks® files.”

Drawings 2020u2 contains a number of additional features including enhancements to .dgn threading support and improvements to the ODA geometry sub-system, as well as fixes for several hundred member-rep orted issues. The SDK and full release notes are available for download at www.opendesign.com.

About Open Design Alliance

ODA builds SDKs for people who work with complex engineering data. We offer solutions for proprietary and open engineering formats including data access, visualization, cloud development, publishing and more. Learn more at www.opendesign.com.