STEP Tools Weekly Newsletter

[Martin Hardwick]

This weekly newsletter is a brief update of what is going on in STEP
and at STEP Tools, Inc.  If you want to know more, try the STEP Tools 
web site (http://www.steptools.com) or the contact for each article.

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Solids on the Translation Service

The translation service has been upgraded to generate solid model
visualizations from your AP-203 files similar to the ones shown in
the picture gallery at:

	http://www.steptools.com/demos/ap203_pix

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EXPRESS-X at Bad Aibling

The EXPRESS-X meeting at Bad Aibling was one of the most successful
since work on the mapping language began. The new language features a
more powerful VIEW construct that allows for partitions, inheritance,
in-line views, and in-line entity definitions. The language no longer
contains the COMPOSE and MEMBER constructs because their features are
provided by the more powerful VIEW construct.

NIST, Daimler Benz and STEP Tools, Inc. are going to implement
prototypes of the new language. STEP Tools, Inc. is in the process of
writing mappings in the new language to show how mapping tables can be
coded using EXPRESS-X, how legacy data can be translated into AP-203
CC1 data using EXPRESS-X and how AP-224 feature data can be translated
into ISO 14649 feature data using EXPRESS-X.

--------------------
XML at Bad Aibling

We had a lot of fun with XML at Bad Aibling. Some members of the
community predicted that XML will make Part 21 obsolete, while others
responded that the XML files being produced were so large that the
prototype systems shown at the meeting could not process all the data
in a small (in scope) AP-203 file.

The truth is somewhere in between. There are going to be a lot of
tools available to process XML including many from big name vendors
such as IBM and Microsoft. Therefore, putting STEP data into XML will
make it more accessible to the wider community.  On the other hand
reading XML is a bit like reading an unprocessed postscript file. The
data volume is huge and the reader quickly gets lost in all the tags.

If you want to try XML our translation service has a translator that
will convert an AP-203 file from Part 21 format to XML format.

    http://www.steptools.com/translate/

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Upcoming Classes

Those who want to know more about the EXPRESS language should be
interested in our Object Oriented Information Modeling with EXPRESS
class to be given in July 14-15. This class has been given to hundreds
of students over the last five years and is an excellent introduction
into how EXPRESS is used to model information in general and STEP in
particular.

    http://www.steptools.com/training/

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Translation Service Statistics

The following is a usage summary for our translation service this week.
For more information see http://www.steptools.com/translate

Summary:
Period Covered: Sun May 31 - Sun Jun 21
    Total usage: 74
    Sucessful usage: 62 (83%)
    Errors: 12 (16%)

--------------------
Our Products

If you are interested in classes, consulting or any of the products
listed please contact info at steptools.com

Programming Tools:
* ST-Developer is a programming tool for writing STEP applications.
* ST-ORACLE is an SQL programming tool for moving STEP data into
  and out of ORACLE databases. 
* ST-ObjectStore is an ObjectStore binding of ST-Developer for moving
  STEP data into and out of ObjectStore databases.
* ST-PowerModel is a tool that inserts STEP data into PowerModel
  databases for Level IV (knowledge base) applications of STEP.
* ST-WebPublisher is a set of programming tools to put STEP data onto
  World Wide Web pages and into Java applets.
* ST-ACIS Library is a library of programming functions to convert
  STEP solid models to ACIS solid models and vice versa.

Desktop Tools:
* ST-EXPRESS is a set of desktop tools to visualize EXPRESS schemas.
* ST-ACIS Translator is a desktop tool for translating ACIS solid
  models to STEP solid models and vice versa.
* ST-Visualizer is a desktop tool to view, analyze and check the
  accuracy of STEP files.

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