As part of the latest updates to the Canvas Envision web services suite, we recently launched an SDK for our embeddable viewing capability. This makes it easy for customers to build Envision’s rich, interactive 3D viewing experience into their own applications – and provides additional security by allowing documents to be viewed offline.
The embeddable viewing function was originally developed to allow customers to embed fully interactive documents created in Envision – known as .evdocs – into their own webpages.
Since .evdocs can be viewed in any standard browser, on any device (unlike 3DPDFs they don’t require special viewers), they are easily embeddable in webpages with a simple code snippet. This enables product sheets and online catalogs to be enhanced with interactive models and animations instead of simple photographs.
Some Envision users also combine embedded viewing with LMS (Learning Management System) applications, adding new levels of interactive functionality to instructional and educational content.
With the addition of an SDK for embeddable viewing we offer customers the ability to embed .evdocs stored locally or on their own cloud, into their web properties and apps. Serving from their own cloud adds an additional security layer and provides complete control, while serving documents locally allows for offline viewing – while retaining the full 3D interactivity of content build in Envision.
The plan for our viewer SDK was to make it as lightweight as possible while losing none of the power of the browser-based Envision viewing experience, and we’re now seeing customers build it into apps they have developed for shop floor usage, replacing PDF viewers which are far more limited. (Obviously the Envision viewer can read PDF as well).
Furthermore we’re seeing a lot of interest from customers who want to embed the viewer into their mixed reality applications, allowing users to interact with .evdocs in their AR and VR environments.
To find out more about the viewer SDK, talk to one of our team
