This document defines the syntax and semantics of a file format for the 3D visualization and interrogation of lightweight geometry and product manufacturing information derived from CAD systems, using visualization software tools that do not need the full capability of a CAD system.

This document has been adopted as a 3D visualization capability in addition to the ISO 10303 series.

The ISO 10303 series are the ISO standards adopted for the engineering data exchange, sharing and long-term archiving of product definition information throughout the product lifecycle.

In this document 3D visualization is defined as the visual presentation on a screen or another media of graphical and textual 3-dimensional representations of a set of data representing an object, information or results of a computational process in order to enable decision process by a human looking at the data visualized in a medium.

The ISO 14306 file format specification for 3D visualization includes data descriptions that can represent the following data:

• facet information (triangles), stored with geometry compression techniques;
• visual attributes such as lights, textures and materials;
• product manufacturing information (PMI);
• boundary representation (b-rep) solid model shape representation and associated metadata;
• configuration representations; and
• delivery methods such as asynchronous streaming of content.

The file format specification for 3D visualization does not specify the implementation of, or definition of a run-time architecture for viewing and/or processing ISO 14306 data.