In order to support the World Wide Web as a primary source of product information, Autodesk has developed i-drop™ technology. This enables manufacturers and design professionals to publish and acquire design data using standard Web pages.

The i-drop Indicator is used to signify content on the World Wide Web that you can transfer to your Autodesk software by means of a drag-and-drop operation. The content can be any type of file (such as a geometry or a raster file) that the content producer has made available and that the application will accept.

For example, say you’re an interior designer and require a specific fixture to embed within your 3ds Max scene. And as it happens, a manufacturer such as Kohler has a Web site containing an i-drop library of its plumbing fixtures. You can browse this library, then drag and drop the appropriate fixture into your scene. You don't need to download the file and then insert it. You can drag any MAX file from an i-drop-enabled Web site and drop its geometry directly into your Autodesk product.

In addition to geometry, you can drag and drop photometric data, cost information, materials, and so on.

An i-drop object in a Web page is an open gateway between the content provider's server and the Autodesk software user's desktop. Web pages that contain i-drop objects can be designed to look and behave exactly like standard Web pages in a standard Web browser. You simply drag the i-drop object from the provider's Web page and drop it onto a desktop or into an application.

The desktop or application is the i-drop target. The i-drop target requests the data in one or more specific clipboard formats and receives the content. This is called being "i-drop aware." i-drop can also deliver data in any of the system default clipboard formats. What the application gets depends on what clipboard format it requires. For example, if the user drags to the desktop, the desktop takes a file. If the user drags to a text editor, the text editor takes textual data. What the desktop or application takes is independent of i-drop.

For more information, see http://idrop.autodesk.com.