ZW3D

ZW3D is a comprehensive tool designed for expert users looking to create, design and export projects for CAM and CAD software applications. It supports a rich set of options and configuration settings.

The installation procedure takes a long while to finish, which is normal, given the complexity of the program. Once this is done, it launches a large window with a professional appearance, representing ZW3D's interface.

Several examples and tutorials are put at your disposal to help you get started. New projects can be created for parts or assemblies, drawing packets or sheets, standalone sketches, CAM plans, equation sets, or multiple objects.

The 3D plan can be easily navigated and rotated. You can zoom in and out, insert sketches and blocks, as well as use a few engineering features like draft, hole, thread, lip or stock. Plus, the properties of the shapes embedded in the project can be edited.

ZW3D lets you work with shapes related to flexing and morphing, free form basic faces and edge detection, wireframe drawing tools and curves, healing features such as sew, corners heal, edge splitting, concatenate and edge refitting, together with assembly functions like inserting, changing, aligning and editing components.

Other tools focus on sheet metals (e.g. full or partial flange, close corner, fold or unfold, change bend angle), point cloud (e.g. remove sphere, trim, split, tessellate), data exchange, direct editing, equation sets and variables, linear and angular annotations, and much more. Undoing and redoing actions is possible, so you can correct any mistakes. Once finished, the project can be printed or exported to files with various extensions, such as IGES, AutoCAD, Parasolid or common image formats (e.g. JPG, BMP).

As expected, ZW3D is high-demanding when it comes to system memory. However, we have not come across any stability issues in our tests because the program did not freeze, crash or pop up error messages. Thanks to its extensive set of features and configuration settings dedicated to CAM/CAD app designing, ZW3D should pique the interest of a lot of users.