Use Case
If you work in other software packages you often create 3D models and other kinds of assets. If you would like to import such assets into your projects and access them from any browser, you can upload them to our cloud storage. When you publish projects containing cloud assets they become available and accessible to everyone on the internet. This way you can create your portfolio library of 3D objects on our website. You can also use these assets to integrate your 3D models with our parametric models in a single environment. In this section we will show you how to do that.
Some of the most advanced users may consider writing games by using our platform. If you are one of them, you can use our cloud assets to create your own game assets library. You can then use these assets in your games and load them whenever the logic dictates.
So far we talked about importing 3D models, but other kinds of assets can be imported as well. You may need to import some data in the form of json or csv and then parse that in the scripts to create a data visualization. Or maybe you want to import a texture image and use it to create a material. All these use cases are possible with the cloud assets.
Important things to know
There are important things related to the access control of your cloud assets that you should understand. If you want to protect your private assets make sure to never publish such a project as it may leak your download urls. Read more about it in our terms and conditions. Also, if you want to share your assets with the world, make sure that you have the right to do so. If you are not sure - do not publish or upload such assets to our platform.
Advice to 3D designers and architects
While we do support many CAD features when creating geometry or even importing STEP files, if you want to import your CAD models into our platform, we suggest that you export them to glTF format. This is a format that is optimized for the web and it will load faster. It will also contain all of your materials and hopefully will look the same as in your CAD software or even better. GLB (Binary glTF format) is even better as the file will generally be smaller in size. You can create skyboxes, lights and shadows in your scripts to make your models look more realistic.
We understand that glTF may not be an optimal choice, but as of this writing we do not yet support file formats such as IFC to import your BIM models.
Also consider STEP or IGES files as they can have many file size and precision related benefits. The downside for you may be that we do not support materials of STEP files. You will have to create your own materials in our platform and assign them to such imported geometric entities.