xfa forms and 3d annotation interaction.

You are correct that you cannot add 3D annotations directly to XFA Forms in the current release of Acrobat 3D or Designer. The option you chose, to first create a 3D PDF and then go into Designer to create a fixed length form will works well. I believe it is possible to do what you want to do in XFA Forms, but it is not straight forward. However, I have not attempted to create buttons to trigger changes such as changing colors, views, etc. in Designer. I do my work in Acrobat using "Acroforms" technology, which I find meets my needs. As you probably know, Acrobat Forms is different technology than XFA forms. There are several pre-defined actions that can be triggered with buttons created in Acrobat. You can also invoke JavaScript to trigger animations, etc. from buttons you create in Acrobat. If your workflows will allow use of Acrobat Forms, I suggest you do your work in that tool set for now. Perhaps someone else with experience directly in XFA can shed a litle more light on the process to use there. I hope this helps some.

I want to add to my earlier answer. I checked with Pierre Tager, Acrobat 3D Product Manager. He suggests the following: After adding the buttons and text fields in LC Designer, to enable interaction between 3D annotations and buttons, the easiest is to use the Link tool and the ‘Custom link’ action.

You may not be able to do everything you want to using the Link tool. You can can use a combination of the Link tool and Javascript to do more advanced things.

Hi Doug,

Thanks a bunch for your response. I am relatively new to acrobat and designer. Appreciate if you can send me a sample that explains the interaction between xfa forms and 3d annotation. we do not want to use acroforms as we are thinking that it may not be good fit to our workflow.