About the Composer Plug-in for Acrobat

The Composer Player and Player Pro installations include the Composer plug-in for Acrobat, which enables you to view 3D content embedded in PDF files and published in SMG format.

Note: The Composer PDF integration uses PDFNet SDK, copyright © PDFTron™ Systems Inc., 2001-2010, and distributed by Dassault Systèmes under license. All rights reserved.

This page discusses:

About the Acrobat Plug-in

This section provides important information regarding the Acrobat Plug-in.

Important: Before installing Composer Player, you must have run Adobe Reader at least once. If you omit to do so, the Adobe Reader plug-in will not be properly installed. Note that the version of Adobe Reader used to install the plug-in is the last one you launched on your computer.

Installing Composer Player installs the plug-in files PlayerControl.dll and PlayerReader.api. The location of the files depends on what you have installed (Composer, Adobe Reader, or Adobe Acrobat). If the files are installed in <Composer_install_dir>\Plugins\Acrobat\Reader\Plug_Ins, then you must copy these files to <Reader_install_dir>\plug_ins or <Acrobat_install_dir>\plug_ins.

Troubleshooting

This section provides troubleshooting information if you encounter issues using the Acrobat Plug-in.

Disabling Protected Mode

Important: Before opening a PDF containing SMG data in Adobe Reader X or later, you need to make sure that protected mode is disabled in Adobe Reader.

To disable protected mode:

  • In Adobe Reader XI, select Edit > Preferences > Security (Enhanced) > Sandbox Protection and clear Enable Protected Mode at startup.
  • In Adobe Reader X, select Edit > Preferences > General and clear Enable Protected Mode at startup.

Note: Acrobat Reader options are found under Edit > Preferences.

Troubleshooting Other Issues

This table below describes how to troubleshoot miscellaneous issues that may arise with the Acrobat plug-in.

If you encounter this issue...Try this workaround...
Model does not display.Make sure you are using Acrobat Reader 7.07 or later. Acrobat Reader 7.0 can read the files but does not support JavaScript added by Composer.
Animations stutter or are unusually slow. Make sure Preferred Renderer on the 3D tab is not set to DirectX 9.
The camera cannot be moved. Select Enable camera animations on the 3D tab.
JavaScript-controlled actions do not work. Select Enable Acrobat JavaScript on the JavaScript tab.
There are rendering errors. Clear Enable double-sided rendering on the 3D tab.