Support

Shapeflow 3D has support for hiding and transforming meshes/bodies but no modification on the vertex/face level. While the underlying Core SDK is capable of doing this, the app and its user interface have been designed with the primary intent of inspecting an object and creating a quick render. Note that any modifications done are not saved.

Unfortunately, the answer right now is no. We are working on this but it is not quite ready yet.

We are very much interested in supporting this but as of now, we use a standard shader-based Blinn/Phong lighting model with additional cube map reflections and image-based lighting. A lot of the ground work for physically-based rendering has already been layed in our Core SDK but we are not there just yet.

Actually, we are interested in integration either an Intel Embree-based or a Blender Cycles-based raytracer at some point but that is currently not a priority. The render dialog in Shapeflow 3D uses offscreen textures to render still images with the exact same shaders as the live viewport. As modern game engines are proofing what incredible quality can be generated in realtime, we are much more interested in adding further effects and thus increase the quality of the images produced.

Currently, the following formats are supported: Alembic, CSB, COLLADA, IGES, JT (only mesh and JTBreps, XT-Brep/libra not supported), LWO/LWS, OFF, OBJ, PLY, 3DM (Rhino3D, OpenNURBS), STEP (AP 203), STL. However, the level of support varies. Due to the complexity of the specifications, not every obscure feature can be supported and so we focused on the most common once. Also note that a lot of exporters (even those integrated in professional-grade applications) produce invalid/damaged files that do not follow the official specification and we can only give limited support for those files.

We are always interested in adding additional formats – as long as a specification and a sufficiently large number of example files are publicly available. This unfortunately is not true for a number of proprietary CAD formats. If you are interested in seeing support for such a format, your best chance is to ask the manufacturer to get in contact with us directly.

Shapeflow 3D is primarily a viewing application. We plan to add STL, OBJ and COLLADA support as an in-app-purchase at some later point as those are the most useful ones. While our Core SDK is capable of exporting further formats (e.g. IGES), we have no plans to add those to the viewer as of now.

Yes, Shapeflow 3D is build using auto-layouting and therefore supports all orientations as well as split-screen mode on the iPad.