whats new in visual collaboration 2016

What’s New in Visual Collaboration

John Sperling

VP Product Management, Aras


Aras Visual Collaboration Easily see your product content,

including:

▫ Office Documents

▫ Drawings, Schematics

▫ 3D Models

▫ Images, Photos

Create markup which is linked with text comments into a discussion thread visible to other users

Pure HTML5, no plugins

No cost to Aras subscribers


Overview

Enhancements have been made to Visual Collaboration in every service pack since its introduction in 11.0, including:

▫ Performance

▫ Viewer windowing and toolbars

▫ PDF viewer technology

▫ Viewer functions

And lots more is planned on the roadmap

Slide 4

Windowing and Toolbars

11 SP4

▫ Viewer toolbars use click-on, click-off

▫ Toolbar and palette updates

11 SP5

▫ Full window used for viewer

▫ Sidebar update

11 SP6

▫ New Standard viewer toolbars

▫ New Viewer menu


Windowing Improvements in 11 SP5


Each Sidebar icon represents a unique type of content that can be displayed in the window

All content types now take entire window extents

Show Discussion Panel

11 SP4 and before

Toolbar Improvements in 11 SP6


Basic (floating) toolbar now contains only functions for casual users

Standard toolbars contain ALL functions

Can be configured by identity and classification using Command Bar definition

PDF Viewer Technology

Browser 11.0 - 11 SP3 11 SP4, 11 SP5 11 SP6 and up

IE (9, 10, 11) PDF.js WebViewer WebViewer

Firefox PDF.js WebViewer PDFNet.js

Chrome PDFNet.js


The initial PDF viewer was the Mozilla open-source PDF.js

Aras has now partnered with PDFTron for state-of-the-art PDF viewing

PDFTron has two PDF viewer technologies:▫ WebViewer, which renders on the server and streams to the browser

▫ PDFNet.js, a JavaScript-based viewer which renders directly in the browser

Both technologies are used, depending on release and browser

New General Functions

▫ Pan mode – pressing the mouse button allows panning of the image within the viewer

▫ Select Text mode – allows selecting text within the PDF file, using the mouse

▫ Currently selected mode stays active until changed


Pan mode

Select Text

modeZoom Window – allows drawing a box to quickly zoom in to a location

Works in both the PDF and Image viewers

New Advanced Functions

Three new advanced PDF functions are available in the advanced portion of the toolbar

Slide 10

Layer Display Compare Files

Measure Distance

Layer Display The Layer Display button is active if the file contains layer information

Clicking the button brings up the Layers dialog. This lists all layers in the file and by default displays the layers that were active when the file was saved

You can select layers to turn on or off, and reset to the original layer state

Slide 11

Measure Distance Allows you to measure between two points

Distance is accurate to the nearest pixel location

▫ Snapping to geometry is planned for a future release

Slide 12

• Pick Measure Distance command• Measurement dialog is opened

• Click to define point A • Click to define point B• Measurement between point A and B

is displayed

1 2 3

Units and Scale

You can select the desired units system for the measurement

You can also set the scale, to match the scaling used in the document (for example on engineering drawings)

Slide 13

Units and Scale

Measurement Units The administrator can control the list of units and the default that

appear in the Measurement dialog, using the new “Measurement Unit” ItemType found in the Admin TOC

Slide 14

Record Measurement If the user clicks on “Record Measurement”, the measurement numbers and

picture are automatically recorded as a message in the Discussion Panel

Slide 15

With thumbnail With snapshot expanded

Compare Files

The Compare Files command performs a raster-based comparison of two files, and displays the difference between them

It is similar to comparing two paper documents on a lightbox

Slide 16

Using Compare Files

Start the comparison using the Compare Files command

The Compare Files dialog lets you select from two options

▫ Compare to a file from a different version of the current item

▫ Compare to a file from a different item

Note:

▫ Comparison is limited to one page of each file

▫ Comparison is based on current layer display for each file

▫ Scaling of both files must be the same

Slide 17

Option 1: Comparing to another version

Slide 18

Document DOC101, Version 3

Comparison View

Start Comparison

Pick Version 1

Document DOC202

At this point nothing happens until you pick the 2nd file

This is in the style of “Beyond Compare”, where you pick the 2 files separately (no search dialogs needed)

Option 2: Comparing to another fileDocument DOC101

Comparison View

1 2

Comparison Viewer When the comparison is started, it automatically creates a new

Comparison Viewer entry in the sidebar

This is active until another sidebar icon is picked, or the window is closed

Slide 20

ComparisonViewer

Compare Dialog - Alignment The Compare dialog has functions to align the images and display the file comparison

If Option 2 was used to start the comparison, the files will most likely need to be aligned

To align the images, use the “Drag to align” button and then drag one image on top of the other

To do fine alignment, use the Arrow keys on the keyboard to align by 1 pixel at a time, or Control + Arrow key to align by 10 pixels at a time

Slide 21

Reset alignment Drag to alignRefresh display

Drag

Compare Dialog – Display Options

The Compare dialog also has functions to display the comparison is various ways

Display only file 1 or only file 2 (toggle between them for a quick visual comparison)

Display combination of file 1 and file 2 (overlay mode)

Display difference view (graphical highlight mode)

Slide 22

Display both files

Display difference view

Display file 2

Display file 1

Compare Dialog – Difference View

Difference View displays differences between the files in a separate color, for easy identification of changes

When Difference View is active, you get a tolerance slider and a color selector

Moving the tolerance slider controls the degree of the raster-based comparison. It can help in detecting differences between the file

Slide 23

Set difference color

Tolerance slider

Differences

Markup on Comparison

When the Comparison Viewer is active, you can create and save markup messages on top of the comparison


Aras Flow

“My work in Aras right now”

Workflow review and signoff

Visual Collaboration with view/markup/discussion

Add sketch, photo, video, and audio

Free Windows Store app

Aras Company Confidential – Do not distribute aras.com

Aras Flow

“My work in Aras right now”

Workflow review and signoff

Visual Collaboration with view/markup/discussion

Add sketch, photo, video, and audio

Free Windows Store app

Aras Company Confidential – Do not distribute aras.com

Available now on iPad, coming soon on Android!

Major Visual Collaboration Release coming soonRelease 11 SP7 – Q2 2016

Notification▫ In web client and email

Message visibility control

Advanced Image Viewer▫ TIFF, BMP file format support▫ Measure and Compare for Images

Sketch function

Print / Download File

Print / Download / Copy Snapshot

General UI Cleanup


Notification

Sketch

Message Visibility

And looking ahead

Enhancements to 3D conversion and viewing

Collaboration review sessions

Linking informal collaboration to formal workflow

Any other ideas?
