STEP Tools Weekly Newsletter for September 14

[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.

There was no newsletter last week because the editor was at the
STEP-NC meeting discussed below.

--------------------
AP-203 in EXPRESS-X

An EXPRESS-X model for AP-203 has been put onto the STEP Tools, Inc.
web site. The model shows how EXPRESS-X can improve the documentation
of the STEP Application Protocols. These protocols have a two level
data model. Today the connection between the two levels is documented
using mapping tables (Clause 5.1 of each standard). The EXPRESS-X
language replaces these tables with executable mappings.

Some benefits for using EXPRESS-X to document an AP include:

* The mapping between the two levels can be checked using an
  EXPRESS-X compiler.

* A navigation and update interface for the higher level model
  can be built by an EXPRESS-X execution system from data belonging
  to the lower level model.

* Rule definitions that apply to the higher level model become
  easier to document, understand, and validate.

* Consequently users can customize and integrate Application
  Protocols more easily (not shown in the AP-203 example).

The penalty for these benefits is negligable because no change is
required to the STEP data exchange process --- data exchange continues
to be implemented by exchanging Part 21 files containing entities
described by the AIM.

    http://www.steptools.com/projects/express-x/homepage.html

--------------------
Slides for STEP-NC Meeting

The STEP-NC meeting last week was very successful. The US attendees
included representatives from the Aerospace, Automotive, and Defense
industries and were joined by international delegates from Germany,
Switzerland, and Japan.  As a result of the meeting, pilot projects
will begin in the US. They are likely to include controller testing at
Lawrence Livermore and NIST, database testing at STEP Tools, Inc.  and
end-user functionality testing at Boeing, General Motors and General
Dynamics Land Systems.

The US representatives at the meeting were particularly keen to make
the new standard as data driven as possible. They wanted to show that
a data pipeline can be constructed to take AP-203 design data,
annotate it with AP-224 manufacturing feature data, compute process
plan dependencies, and output the result as an AP-213 file for the
macro process plan with references to ISO 14649 files for the individual
machine tool working steps.

Fred Proctor of NIST and Martin Hardwick of STEP Tools, Inc. gave
themselves the homework of showing how dependencies between ISO 14649
working steps can be documented using concepts taken from the Process
Specification Language (PSL). The idea of the project is to allow an
ISO 14649 file to be defined as flexibly as possible so that an
intelligent controller has maximum scope to pick the best execution
strategy for its current conditions.

The following slides were produced by Martin Hardwick to show
relationships between STEP and STEP-NC.

    http://www.steptools.com/~hardwick/STEP-NC/index.htm

--------------------
Translation Service Statistics

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

Summary:
	Total usage: 1227
	Successful usage: 842 (68%)
	Errors: 385 (31%)

--------------------
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.

* 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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