STEP Tools News for Monday September 20

[Martin Hardwick]

Since 1991 STEP Tools has been developing tools and databases for
product data. 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).


-----------------------------
Help Files for ST-Viewer

The help files for the inexpensive ST-Viewer are on our
web site.  A library of test files is also on the site.

   http://www.steptools.com/products/stviewer/help/index.html
   http://www.steptools.com/products/stviewer/samples/test1.html


-----------------------------------
Fundamentals of STEP Implementation

A paper describing how to implement STEP applications has been added
to the front page of our web site. The author is the chief programmer
for ST-Developer, our best selling tool for writing STEP and EXPRESS
applications. The paper describes how STEP is organized into different
parts, and how users should approach the development of STEP
applications.

    http://www.steptools.com/library/fundimpl.pdf


--------------------------------------
Reminder: ST-Developer Mystery Programs

Our web site contains a list of programs showing how different units
of functionality are implemented. The examples can help you write
programs to build assemblies, manage versions and link the basic
information necessary to define a STEP file.

    http://www.steptools.com/support/mystery/

As Boeing kindly allowed us to state in a recent newsletter,
ST-Developer has been used in their DCAC/MRM project to develop a PDM
interface that write thousands of files similar to the ones in the
mystery programs.

"On March 1, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group implemented the eighth
of eleven phases of its new standardized business processes and system
called Define and Control Airplane Configuration/ Manufacturing
Resource Management. In the first 21 hours of startup processing, more
than 900,000 part numbers were successfully converted to the Metaphase
Product Data Manager. Of those part numbers, 187,000 were then
translated to parts lists using STEP. The parts lists were sent for
initialization to eight suppliers at eleven sites. Between March and
April, 850 STEP parts lists were sent from the new DCAC/MRM production
system to suppliers."


---------------------------------------
The Parasolid Translator Soaks Up Some Punishment

If you look at the numbers below you will see that the STEP to
Parasolid translator did not have a good week.  But this is exactly
the sort of hard use that we want!  We put the tools up on our web
translation service to make sure they hold up to real-world parts.

If you have any of the files that have been causing the translator
trouble please send them to us!


-------------------
Translation Service

Summary:
Period Covered: Sun Sep 12 03:25:02 1999 -- Sun Sep 19 03:25:02 1999
Total usage: 67
Successful usage: 52 (77%)
Errors: 15 (22%)


Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	6	0	100%
ap203-acis	12	0	100%
ap203-vrml	22	4	81%
gifviz		3	1	66%
para-step	4	4	0%
step-para	5	5	0%
step2xml	6	0	100%
steptoimage	7	1	85%
xml2step	2	0	100%

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

------------------------------------
Summary:
 Period Covered: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 -- Sun Sep 19 03:25:21 1999
Total usage: 5787
Successful usage: 4957 (85%)
Errors: 830 (14%)


Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	1126	52	95%
ap203-acis	2030	212	89%
ap203-stl	131	46	64%
ap203-vrml	607	179	70%
ap203-xml	87	18	79%
ap203check	269	26	90%
expfront	124	17	86%
expfront2	133	1	99%
express2html	278	2	99%
expxfront	11	1	90%
gifviz		207	54	73%
iges-ap202	10	0	100%
para-step	124	60	51%
sp203-xml	13	2	84%
step-para	132	73	44%
step2xml	166	18	89%
steptoimage	299	56	81%
xml2step	40	13	67%


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

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

* ST-J Adaptor -- Java programming tools.

* ST-ORACLE -- SQL programming tools. 

* ST-ObjectStore -- ObjectStore programming tools.

* 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.

* ST-Visualizer Library -- programming functions to visualize STEP
  data.

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-Viewer -- inexpensive desktop tool to view, analyze and annotate
  STEP data.

Database:
* ST-Repository -- Parts library database for design and manufacturing
  applications with services for Translation, Visualization and 
  Java/XML programming.


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