OK I tested a bit of USD and exported something from Vectorworks.
USD re-import needed much more time, but looks really cool.
Geometry, UVW, Textures, Materials, scale, rotation, position looks
great.
But just a bunch of Meshes, at least named (!) Groups, but as VW
does not deal very well with Meshes (Selection and such)
no fun to use if you need to edit it.
But I see a great future for library element imports, like furniture
and such, that you do not need to edit.
Blender’s USD seems to be at the beginning …
(I hope Apple will help them and adress this after full Metal and Mx support)
Both VW and Blende Files are in Meters, both Blender and VW have Z Axis up,
but USD in Blender is rotated and scale is off by 100 or 1000.
Hard to estimate as also one VW Stair is totally of scale and occludes the
healthy rest of Geometry.
Strangely, in my last Modo v15 (2-3 yers behind), while Modo always Y Axis up,
it comes in still/also rotated ?
Both Blender and Modo show access to Texture Images but do not really show
them in Materials (?) - I think maybe another scaling issue - for UVW.
So for now, VW USD exports look best imported in VW, although you can not do
much with it.
Nevertheless, VW USD (early) support was done in collaboration with Nvidia.
And Nvidia seems to have great ambitions to further develop and extend
Open Source USD format.
As it already would have the potential to offer are pretty lossless 3D exchange
and collaboration.
(Not sure if VW’s USD updates will continue as much when Nvidia leaves ?)
And it has all potential to manage really large data sets. Basically a “digital
Twin” of our whole cities or earth, as allowing al kind of simplification tricks
to reload details in real time, e.g. Nanite or Lumen from Unreal Engine
and such, to display a whole Big City still in real time.
Also I think that that USD, via Metadata, would ideally, finally allow a lossless
exchange even between 3D and CAD/BIM. (keeping Solid information and such)
If support USD feature speed will be faster than 20 years of IFC support and such …
So currently I am really very excited about USD.
(I follow it superficially since a few years but thought we were still at its beginning,
which looks like being not that wrong)
I think development speed and support are now rising exponentially.
(Thanks to also Nvidia, unfortunately. I have a PC beside Mac,
but obviously not invited by my AMD RX 6800 GPU)
TL;DR;
As Nvidia started to build all their (freemium) Apps directly on USD format !
I think this is (illusionary but) maybe the best 3D File Format to build a 3D
App on for todays and future needs.
But finally,
if there will some time be 95% lossless USD exports and import from Apps,
we still want real Exchange between different Apps over USD.
Via Connectors !
And this is exactly where Speckle comes into place !
So in that sense, I think a USD direct Upload - like for IFC - could help
by enriching projects by adding entourage like furniture or plants, …
but also reduce exchange lossiness for 3D Apps in the near future.
(Wide adoption by Apple, Meta, Nvidia, …, open source)
and in the far future even help 3D to CAD/BIM exchange and collaboration (?)