July 20 Edition of 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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Early ST-Developer v7 Results

ST-Developer v7 is being prepared for release in the Fall.  The code
is not yet finished but we have built some test applications using the
prototype libraries.  So far our results are showing that applications
built using the ST-Developer v7 prototypes are 20% faster than
applications built using ST-Developer 1.6.

The improved performance has been obtained by re-organizing the class
libraries so entity extents are accessed more efficiently and entity
instances use less memory.  In principle, the optimizations can reduce
the memory used for instances by 39% and increase the execution speed
by 42%.  Real applications are unlikely to see improvements of this
magnitude but the early results are encouraging.
 
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Lessons Learned developing protocols for NIIIP

A paper describing lessons learned during the research phase of the
National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols program is on
our web site. The paper describes how four protocols developed by the
NIIIP program overcome barriers to sharing technical product data
between enterprises over the Internet.

      http://www.steptools.com/projects/niiip/

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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 Jul 12 - Sun Jul 19
   Total usage: 40
   Sucessful usage: 26 (65%)
   Errors: 14 (35%)

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The Translation Service

The Translation Service is set of resources that can be used to
administer, translate and visualize STEP files.  Anyone can use the
translation service. A set of example files is loaded into the service
for those who do not have STEP files. (Select the option "Use a file
already on the server" in the prompt that asks for data.)

* STEP AP-203 to ACIS/AUTOCAD -- Convert a STEP file to ACIS
	for use in an ACIS based CAD system such as AUTOCAD.

* ACIS/AutoCAD to STEP AP-203 -- Convert an AUTOCAD or other
	ACIS file to STEP. (The ACIS file must have the ".sat"
	extension.)

* STEP AP-203 to VRML -- Generate a VRML visualization file
	from a STEP file. The VRML file can be loaded into web
	browsers that contain a VRML plug-in.

* STEP AP-203 to STL -- Generate an STL file from a STEP
	file and make a prototype of the part using a Stereo
	Lithography machine.

* EXPRESS Syntax Checker -- Check the syntax of an EXPRESS 
	schema using the STEP Tools, Inc. EXPRESS compiler.

* EXPRESS-X Syntax Checker -- Check the syntax of a Toronto
	version EXPRESS-X schema view using the STEP Tools, Inc.
	EXPRESS-X compiler

* AP-203 Visualization tools for GIF, JPEG and VRML -- New
	tools to translate an AP-203 assembly to a set of GIF,
	JPEG or VRML files for processing in a Java browser.

* STEP to XML -- Convert an AP-203 file to XML using the XML
	encoding proposed by the ISO STEP PWI.


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