STEP Tools Weekly Newsletter for October 19

[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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Patent Problems for OLE DMAC

The Design and Modeling Application Council (DMAC) have been
developing specifications for sharing data between three dimensional
modeling applications on Microsoft platforms.  Like many initiatives,
DMAC is quick to dicsuss the translation problems that can occur when
neutral formats such as IGES and STEP are used to transfer data
between systems. Also like others they never quite explain how their
alternative avoids the problem of translation.  (If two systems using
two languages need to communicate then translation seems to be
unavoidable).

One of the problems with vendor driven "open" standards is that one is
never quite sure how open the standard will be in the future. This issue
has become a big problem for DMAC in recent months because Intergraph
has been given a patent for some of the key technology used in DMAC.
For the moment Integraph is being quite generous in licensing the
technology but they are reserving the right to change the terms and
conditions at any time.

      http://www.dmac.org/tech/index.htm

--------------------
Beijing ISO Meeting

The Beijing meeting was attended by many delegates from the USA,
Europe and the Far East. A lot of good work continued on EXPRESS-X, AP
Modularization, STEP/XML interfaces, and new Application Protocols.
The next meeting is in San Francisco in January.

--------------------
Part 49 is a Standard

The 40 series of parts has been completed with the publication of Part 49
"Process Structure and Properties". The 40 series are the foundation of
STEP. They ensure the quality of the various STEP standards and allow 
applications to interoperate across application domains. 

A full list of the series follows.

Part 41 - Fundamentals of product description and support
Part 42 - Geometric and topological representation
Part 43 - Representation structures
Part 44 - Product structure configuration
Part 45 - Materials
Part 46 - Visual presentation
Part 47 - Shape variation tolerances
Part 49 - Process structure and properties

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

Summary:
Period Covered: Sun Oct 11 03:25:02 1998 -- Sun Oct 18 03:25:02 1998
Total usage: 135
Successful usage: 102 (75%)
Errors: 33 (24%)

Year to Date Summary

Total usage: 1627
Successful usage: 1119 (68%)
Errors: 508 (31%)

--------------------
Resellers

Resellers for STEP Tools products are available in the following
geographic areas.  Please contact us if you would like further
information.

--North America
	Integrated Engineering Solutions, Iowa City IA
--France
	Espri Concept, Sophia Antipolis Cedex
--Germany
	EuroSTEP GmbH, Bad Aibling
--Russia
	Applied Logistics, Moscow
--Sweden
	EuroSTEP AB, Stockholm
--United Kingdom
	CADDETC, Leeds
	EuroSTEP UK, Denbigh
--China
	C-STEP, Beijing
--Japan
	Open Systems, Inc., Tokyo
--Korea
	Mani Information Systems, Inc.
--Taiwan
	Exartech International Corp., Taipei
	Axxon Technology, Taipei
	INTEXS International,Virgina Beach Va.
--Australia
	Logistics Pty Ltd., Victoria


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