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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Parasolid License

STEP Tools has purchased a license for the Parasolid modeling kernel
to develop a direct STEP to Parasolid translator. The translator will
be available as an executable and as an extensible library. Users will
be able to use the translator to convert Parasolid data to STEP and
vice versa. The new translator joins a growing library of "Direct to
STEP" translators. Direct to STEP translators are more efficient and
less error prone than indirect ones because they do not require an
additional translation into an intermediate form.

For more information see the library of press releases at:

	http://www.steptools.com/news/

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Modular version of STEP

PDES, Inc. is leading an important initiative to make STEP more
modular. In the first phase of STEP deployment, STEP implementors
concentrated on the common core of AP-203 (general mechanical design)
and AP-214 (automotive specific mechanical design).

In the second phase, implementors are going to develop translators and
databases for a wide range of AP's. To manage this, the implementors
need help. Specifically, the common parts of the different application
protocols need to be clearly labeled so that implementors know when
they can reuse the same code to process two AP's.

PDES, Inc. is performing this service by producing a new version of
STEP that divides the Application Protocols into modules. Therefore,
an implementor will know when two protocols can be processed using
the same code because the common part will be defined by the same
module. The importance of this activity was recognized at the last
STEP meeting when the member countries agreed to make it an official
ISO STEP work item.

STEP Tools, Inc. has been a member of PDES, Inc. for four years.
Functionality to implement the new modular architecture was added to
version 1.6 of ST-Developer and further functionality is being added
to version 7. For more information see the ST-Developer 1.6 release
notes at:

	http://www.steptools.com/support/stdev_docs/whats_new.html

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SDAI Library for AP-203

The Standard Data Access Interface (SDAI) is a library of functions
for programming STEP data in databases and Part 21 files. The SDAI
library includes functions that can be used to find data, change data
and check data using its EXPRESS definition.

ST-Developer includes SDAI libraries in C, C++ and Java.  The C
library uses an EXPRESS interpreter to check local and global rules of
an EXPRESS schema. The next release of ST-Developer will also include
functions to check specific AP-203 rules. The new functions will
execute more quickly and give better error messages than the
interpreter-driven ones because they are coded directly in C.

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Upcoming Classes

Those who want to know more about the EXPRESS language may be
interested in the Object Oriented Information Modeling with EXPRESS
class to be given in July 14-15. The class is an 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 Jun 28 - Sun Jul 5
    Total usage: 23
    Sucessful usage: 17 (73%)
    Errors: 6 (26%)

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WELCOME NEW AND REPEAT CUSTOMERS IN JUNE 1998!

    Alias Wavefront (ST-Developer, renewal)
    Asahi Engineering (ST-Developer, renewal)
    Bentley Systems  (ST-Developer, 10 licenses, renewal)
    Boeing (ST-Developer and ST-Oracle)
    Bridgeport Machines (ST-Developer, renewal)
    CEA (ST-Developer, evaluation)
    CSICCI (ST-Developer)
    CTC (ST-Developer, 3 licenses, renewal, ST-ObjectStore, renewal)
    EDF/DER (ST-Developer evaluation)
    EDS (ST-Developer, 6 licenses, renewal, ST-Visualizer, renewal)
    Gintic Institute (ST-Developer, renewal, ST-Visualizer, renewal)
    Goddard Space Flight Center (ST-Developer, ST-WebPublisher, 
	ST-Visualizer, and ST-ACIS, renewal)
    Hitachi Ltd (ST-Developer renewal, ST-Oracle renewal)
    Hokkaido University (ST-Developer renewal)
    Hongik University (ST-Developer)
    IDED  (ST-ACIS Translator)
    INA Werk Schaeffler (ST-Developer, 2 licenses, renewal)
    Institute for Information Industry (ST-Developer)
    Japan STEP Promotion Center (ST-Developer, renewal)
    KAIST (ST-Developer)
    Licom Systems (ST-Developer renewal)
    Lulea University  (ST-Developer, 2 licenses, and ST-Visualizer, renewal)
    Monash University (ST-Developer, renewal)
    Seoul National University (ST-Developer, renewal)
    Tahwa Inst. of Tech. (ST-Developer)
    USACERL (ST-Developer)
    University of Iowa  (ST-Developer, renewal)
    University of Newcastle (ST-Developer, renewal, ST-ObjectStore, renewal)
    University of Patras (ST-Developer, evaluation)
    VTT (ST-Developer, renewal)
    Yonsei University (ST-Developer, renewal)

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