Deep Exploration 5 Review

Posted on April 30, 2008
Filed Under Tools |

The latest release of Deep Exploration ™ from Right Hemisphere improves on an already excellent product.

Deep Exploration 5 delivers the following improvements over the previous generation product, with an update coming in June that promised to add more than the typical mid-release incremental bug fixes and tweaks. Before going into details on this anticipated update (5.5), let me highlight the feature of Version 5 which I have been using since the beginning of 2008:

With Right Hemisphere 5 Deep Exploration Standard Edition you can:

Transform simple 2D and 3D models and multimedia files.

Translate, optimize and repair over 40 popular 2D and 3D graphics, audio,
video, and motion capture file formats. (DE CAD Edition required for
some major CAD applications such as CATIA, Pro-E, PTC, etc.
See Supported Formats overview.)

Easily author a wide range of 2D and 3D product graphics

Author photorealistic images, 3D animated scenes, model views, or simply
view and markup graphics (DE CAD Edition required to creative
advanced 2D illustrations)

Publish finished product graphics and documents

Publish to more than 40 different 2D and 3D graphic formats. Automatically
publish into 3D interactive PDF documents, Microsoft Office applications,
Adobe Framemaker or HTML

Now, some specific details about 5.5 which is shipping this June, 2008:

Key Deep Exploration 5.5 Feature Categories

Real-time 3D Visual Manufacturing Instructions

Steps & Procedures
2D Layers & Symbols

Technical Illustration

Enhanced CAD loaders to enable dynamic “Thick and Thin” line display.
WYSIWYG export to supported Vector and Raster formats.
Enhanced Callouts Dialogs to improve speed of authoring

Ease of Use

UI enhancements to improve solution workflows

New Subscription and Floating License Product Pricing Model

Network License Management (NLM) allows customers a floating license system.
Internet License Activation (ILA) allows customers to license DE on their computer for a period of time or forever.
Manual License Activation (MLA) enables single customers who do not have access to the internet and not using the NLM, they can still be authorized by email and then manually entering the authorization key.

Remember, if you need to translate some of the more common CAD formats, particularly CATIA, you will need to purchase Deep Exploration CAD Edition.

Although I do not use all of the features that Deep Exploration offers, I will attest that the improvements in version 5 have reduced the requirements for other authoring tools in many cases. This is particularly true if your objective is to publish into Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1 or higher documents. The work flow here is excellent and a huge time-saver over the previous generation, thanks both to Right Hemisphere and Adobe. In many cases, you may even be able to bypass previously mandatory DCC tools like Maya and 3DS Max. But your graphic artists will still stay busy.

I would be interested in learning about your experiences with translation and authoring using the latest version of Deep Exploration.

-Andy

3D Landing Gear in Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1