STEP Tools Weekly Newsletter for November 16

[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.

--------------------
What is next for ST-WebExchange?

Those of you who have been paying attention will know that we are
close to releasing a new software for processing product data on the
Internet. The new software contains four services that can be added to
World Wide Web servers:

Translation Service     - translate product data to and from STEP
Warehousing Service     - store product data for projects
Visualization Service   - prepare visual data for use on the Internet
Mapping Service         - map data into Enterprise Java Beans for 
                          processing by Internet applications

The first three of these services are available for testing on our web
site. The mapping service will become available in the first and second
quarters of next year (1999).

These four services let organizations collaborate on product design
and manufacturing projects over the Internet. The Translation Service
lets organizations load data into a web site. The Warehousing Service
stores data for different projects. The Visualization Service prepares
the data for visualization using HTML pages. The Mapping Service lets
the applications of an enterprise process the data using Enterprise
Java Beans.

The Mapping Service has evolved as a result of our participation in
the National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols project.
In this project we found that industries want to use standard data to
represent their products, but also require that data to be in a form
that is easy to manipulate in their processes. Therefore, we worked
with the STEP community to develop the EXPRESS-X mapping language.

EXPRESS-X allows a STEP expert to quickly describe an algorithm to map
data from the standard form prescribed by STEP into the object models
required by enterprise processes. Once the STEP expert has described
the algorithm, enterprise programmers can develop applications that
use the object model without knowing anything about STEP.

The applications can include Internet tools to build product
structure, control configurations, release bill of materials, define
manufacturing features, and so on. The mapping service also converts
data from an EXPRESS format into a Java Object Stream or XML format so
that it can be read by any Internet process. In the reverse direction
the mapping service reads a Java Object Stream or XML and converts it
back into STEP data using a reverse mapping.

If you would like to try the first three services of ST-WebExchange
please visit our web site at 

	http://www.steptools.com/translate

If you would like a white paper describing the full functionality of
ST-WebExchange please send a message to info at steptools.com

--------------------
Upcoming Classes

An Introduction to STEP. This class is a good introduction to STEP for
managers and anyone else who needs to understand the business advantages
of standard product data. The next class is being held on Monday,
December 7.

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

Implementing STEP Translators. This class is a comprehensive course on
everything you need to know to write a STEP geometry translator. It
includes hands-on training using our programming environments and makes
extensive use of examples from our ST-ACIS programming library. The
next class is being held from December 8 to 11.

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

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

Summary:
Period Covered: Sun Nov  8 03:25:03 1998 -- Sun Nov 15 03:25:03 1998
Total usage: 125
Successful usage: 81 (64%)
Errors: 44 (35%)


Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	16	0	100%
ap203-acis	54	24	55%
ap203-stl	6	2	66%
ap203-vrml	6	4	33%
ap203check	2	2	0%
expfront2	2	0	100%
express2html	24	0	100%
gifviz		4	3	25%
steptoimage	11	9	18%

=======================================
All-Time stats

Summary:
Period Covered: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 -- Sun Nov 15 03:25:10 1998
Total usage: 1985
Successful usage: 1720 (86%)
Errors: 265 (13%)


Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	435	15	96%
ap203-acis	687	80	88%
ap203-stl	49	16	67%
ap203-vrml	259	74	71%
ap203-xml	33	5	84%
ap203check	21	4	80%
expfront	124	17	86%
expfront2	5	0	100%
express2html	179	0	100%
expxfront	11	1	90%
gifviz		24	13	45%
iges-ap202	10	0	100%
sp203-xml	13	2	84%
steptoimage	135	38	71%

--------------------
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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