Heart: 3D Printing/ 3D PDF view

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PDF3D works, it has just become largely irrrelevant.

  1. You can drop 3D models in standard file format (STL, OBJ, …) into Word or PowerPoint. Anybody can open the file and rotate the model around.

  2. Web browsers on your PC, tablet, phone, etc. have become so powerful that you don’t need apps for displaying objects in standard 3D file formats. There are lots of online viewers that just needs a URL of your model file and they can show it in your browser.

How to export a model from Slicer and create a link for viewing it in a web browser:

  • Export segmentation to OBJ format using OpenAnatomy Exporter module (provided by SlicerOpenAnatomy extension)
  • put them in a folder that has the same name as the .obj file and zip it
  • open this URL in your web browser (on your desktop, table, or phone) and open the zip file in it: https://kitware.github.io/vtk-js/examples/OBJViewer/OBJViewer.html

You can also create a direct “view in browser” link that you can send to anyone:

  • get a direct download link
    • for example, upload to Dropbox and replace the beginning of your default download URL by https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/
  • create a viewer URL by adding this before your download URL: https://kitware.github.io/vtk-js/examples/OBJViewer/OBJViewer.html?fileURL=

Example URL for the SPL knee atlas: https://kitware.github.io/vtk-js/examples/OBJViewer/OBJViewer.html?fileURL=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1ymrrdpy563w6jv/knee.zip

There are lots of other web viewers based on vtk.js, babylon.js, three.js that you can use instead of a proprietary PDF3D viewer.

Check out these examples just to see what’s possible:

3D object web viewers:

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