Industry Shakeup: Adobe Acquires TTF

Adobe Systems buys out Trade and Technologies France -- we know them as TTF of Lyons, France. They make 3D MCAD translators, and so Adobe plans to add TTF translators to Adobe software. I am guessing Acrobat, in particular.

Unti recentlyl, I have found Adobe's efforts towards CAD somewhat weak. Last year's Acrobat Pro with 3D was a disaster -- no translator included! This year, v7.0.7 adds the U3D translator, but now Adobe goes full-strength so that the Fords and Boeings of big industry can view NX and Catia drawings in Acrobat. Adobe makes its money from the PDF servers, not the freebee viewer that you and I download.

TTF produces:

+ CAD libraries for reading and writing CAD/CAM/CAE files in native formats,
+ Native translators with history tree and features.
+ Multi-CAD digital mockup and collaboration software.

Supported formats include CATIA V4 and V5, SOLIDWORKS, IDEAS, PRO/ENGINEER, UNIGRAPHICS, CADDS,
EUCLID, PARASOLID, DWG, DXF, and ACIS as well as industry standards IGES, STEP, and VDA.