STEP Tools Weekly News for February 22

[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).


--------------------
American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Endorses STEP

Last week STEP Tools, Inc. attended a technical workshop sponsored by the AISC
and gave a presentation on the new features in ST-Developer v7.0. The
following information is take from the AISC web site (http://www.aisc.org). 

"AISC Endorses Version 2.0 of CIMsteel Integration Standards

While the advent of computer technology has greatly improved the speed of
steel design, bottlenecks still occur due to repetitive data entry
requirements. To help facilitate the electronic transfer of data between
different members of the design and construction team, the Board of
Directors of the American Institute of Steel Construction, Inc. (AISC) has
endorsed Version 2.0 of the CIMsteel Integration Standards (CIS)."

CIS defines an information model for steel frame design and analysis.
The model is defined using the EXPRESS language, and uses many of the
the pre-defined data definitions from the STEP Integrated Resources. The
adoption of STEP by AISC is good news for the Ship Building, Process Plant
and Building Application Protocols because it implies that steel using
industries will be able to share data with steel vendors and makers.


--------------------
ISO 14649 Part 21

The Application Interpreted Model for the STEP-NC Milling schema will
be published next week. The STEP-NC Milling schema is an information
model for describing manufacturing working steps for milling machines.
14649-21 shows how this model can be integrated with the rest of the
STEP information models so that:

* A design can be defined using AP-203

* Manufacturing features are added to the design using AP-224

* NC Contoller working Steps are added to the features using
  14649-21.


--------------------
New Products

Look for the following new software in the next months:

* The first version of ST-Parasolid. We have been testing a new
  Parasolid translator in this round of STEPnet. Look for it
  on the translation service.

* Version 3.0 of ST-Visualizer. The new visualizer will display
  large models more reliably thanks to all of the experience we have
  been getting from the translation service.

* Version 1.0 of ST-WebExchange. The first version of this new 
  product for data sharing on the Internet will contain a
  Translation Service and a Visualization Service. 


--------------------
Translation Service 
Summary:
Period Covered: Sun Feb 14 03:25:04 1999 -- Sun Feb 21 03:25:04 1999
Total usage: 111
Successful usage: 95 (85%)
Errors: 16 (14%)


Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	5	0	100%
ap203-acis	65	6	90%
ap203-vrml	8	4	50%
ap203check	3	0	100%
expfront2	10	0	100%
express2html	1	0	100%
gifviz		1	0	100%
step2xml	10	5	50%
steptoimage	7	1	85%
xml2step	1	0	100%

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

------------------------------------
Summary:
Period Covered: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 -- Sun Feb 21 03:25:15 1999
Total usage: 3261
Successful usage: 2841 (87%)
Errors: 420 (12%)


Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	649	17	97%
ap203-acis	1251	134	89%
ap203-stl	85	33	61%
ap203-vrml	331	92	72%
ap203-xml	87	18	79%
ap203check	110	15	86%
expfront	124	17	86%
expfront2	71	0	100%
express2html	218	0	100%
expxfront	11	1	90%
gifviz		81	34	58%
iges-ap202	10	0	100%
sp203-xml	13	2	84%
step2xml	20	5	75%
steptoimage	189	49	74%
xml2step	11	3	72%

--------------------
Our Tools

Our tools have been used to implement the STEP translators of EDS
Unigraphics, Bentley Microstation, Alias Wavefront, IRONCAD, CADKEY,
Boeing DCAC/MRM and many more. For more information on classes,
consulting and any of these tools contact info at steptools.com.

Programming:
* ST-Developer -- programming tools for writing STEP applications,
  translators and databases.

* ST-ORACLE -- SQL programming tool for moving STEP data into and
  out of ORACLE databases. 

* ST-ObjectStore -- ObjectStore binding of ST-Developer for moving
  STEP data into and out of ObjectStore databases.

* ST-ACIS Library -- programming functions to convert STEP data to 
  and from ACIS models and SAT files.

* ST-Parasolid Library -- programming functions to convert STEP data to 
  and from Parasolid models.

Desktop:
* ST-EXPRESS -- desktop tool to visualize EXPRESS schemas.

* ST-ACIS Translator -- desktop tool for translating STEP data to
  ACIS and vice versa.

* ST-Parasolid Translator -- desktop tool for translating STEP data to
  Parasolid and vice versa.

* ST-Visualizer -- desktop tool to view, analyze and check the
  accuracy of STEP databases.

Database:
* ST-WebExchange -- World Wide Web database for product data sharing
  integration, translation and visualization over the Internet.


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