With their response to the market and regulatory challenges, modern enterprises have introduced and continuously improved processes, methods and tools to feed the individual needs of their business domains, multidisciplinary teams and supply chain, mastering the growing complexity of virtual product development. As far as product data are concerned, data exchange, 3D visualization and communication are key processes for reusing manufacturing intelligence across lifecycle stages. User-friendly access to the increasing amount of information plays an essential role in business and leisure. Several CAD interoperability and visualization formats meanwhile have been developed to support product development strategies. Such activities also include national and international associations and standardization bodies. The emerged methods and systems aim to increase the performance, acceptance, and user experience of graphical data representations for a broad range of users. This paper analyses methods and tools used in virtual product development to leverage 3D CAD data in the entire life cycle. It presents a set of versatile concepts for mastering exchange, aware and unaware visualization and collaboration from single technical packages fit purposely for various domains and disciplines.