STEP Tools News for Monday October 4

Mon Oct 4 15:39:13 EDT 1999

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).

------------------------------
STEP for Building Construction

A highly informative workshop on the information models for building
construction was held at Georgia Tech last week. The advantages and
problems of using STEP in building are strikingly similar to those of
manufacturing.

* For both building and manufacturing the benefits of using
  STEP are easy to quantify.

In manufacturing there have been numerous press releases describing
how the richer information provided by STEP can reduce manufacturing
costs by between 35% and 75%.

The situation in construction is similar. If the members of a
construction project could create virtual models of a building before
the real thing, then the overhead due to construction errors would be
reduced from 20% to 10%. In other words the cost of a $12M building is
reduced to $11M. Furthermore, if a full fidelity model of the building
was delivered to the new owner then the cost of the risk of not
knowing for sure what is in the building would be reduced from 40% to
20%.

* Building and manufacturing is performed by both small and
  large companies. 

Many of the benefits of deploying STEP will be reaped by the small
companies, but the initial investment must be made by the large
companies. The building and construction industries are quite jealous
of the large aerospace companies that can make this investment for
manufacturing.

* The tactical problem in both industries is how to divide
  the initial investment into smaller chunks that pay for
  themselves and the next investment.

The AEC solution is to divide implementation of the model into smaller
chunks. The first to be implemented are models for steel structures
developed by CIMSteel:

    http://www.cis2.org

and a set of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) developed by the
Indusry Alliance for Interoperability (IAI). Both projects are
making significant use of the tools developed by STEP Tools.  So far
three vendors are implementing the CIMSteel model using ST-Developer,
and two weeks ago there was a big IAI demonstration in Japan in which
9 vendors used ST-Developer.

----------------
ATP Announcement

The announcement of the winners for this years ATP program has been
delayed for another week. Therefore, we will have to wait for another
week to see if the Model Driven Intelligent Control of Manufacturing
proposal submitted by STEP Tools is amongst the winners.

If anybody has any nails that need chewing please send them. The local
supply has been all used up.

----------------------------------------
ISO 14649 (STEP-NC) Meeting in Frankfurt

The STEP-NC meeting in Germany went very well until the end. The
requirements model described by Part 11 is being simplified so that it
contains less objects, and a new conformance class is being added so
that material volume removal regions can be described using Advanced
Faces with topology.

The bad news happened after the some of the US delegation had to leave
to catch planes home. The German delegation insisted that their IMS
project requires Part 11 be advanced to DIS ballot in advance of all
of the other parts. They do not think it should be submitted for a
second CD ballot despite the many changes that have been made since
the first ballot, and they will not wait for the AIM to be completed
before beginning the ballot as would be required by STEP before a DIS
vote.

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

Summary:
Period Covered: Sun Sep 26 03:25:02 1999 -- Sun Oct  3 03:25:02 1999
Total usage: 102
Successful usage: 72 (70%)
Errors: 30 (29%)

Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	13	0	100%
ap203-acis	45	12	73%
ap203-stl	1	0	100%
ap203-vrml	6	0	100%
ap203check	15	2	86%
expfront2	1	0	100%
gifviz		4	3	25%
para-step	10	9	10%
step-para	6	4	33%
step2xml	1	0	100%

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

------------------------------------
Summary:
Period Covered: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 -- Sun Oct  3 03:25:21 1999
Total usage: 5971
Successful usage: 5073 (84%)
Errors: 898 (15%)

Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	1155	52	95%
ap203-acis	2086	225	89%
ap203-stl	135	48	64%
ap203-vrml	621	185	70%
ap203-xml	87	18	79%
ap203check	290	34	88%
expfront	124	17	86%
expfront2	135	1	99%
express2html	280	2	99%
expxfront	11	1	90%
gifviz		211	57	72%
iges-ap202	10	0	100%
para-step	146	80	45%
sp203-xml	13	2	84%
step-para	155	89	42%
step2xml	171	18	89%
steptoimage	300	56	81%
xml2step	41	13	68%

--------------------------------
Welcome New and Repeat Customers

This list is for July, August and September 1999.

3D Eye, Inc.
ATI Advanced Technology Institute
Allied Signal, Inc.
American Bureau of Shipping
Bentley Systems
Boeing
Castillion Precision Graphics
Cimatron
Chonbuk University
Computer Sciences Corp
Concurrent Technologies Corporation
DELCAM International
Design Data
General Motors/EDS
Georgia Institute of Technology (ECRC)
Georgia Institute of Technology (ECRC)
Georgia Institute of Technology
Indian Institute of Technology
Inha University
Kao Yuan Institute of Technology
KAIST, Korea Advanced Inst. of Science & Engineering
Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories
Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories
Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories
Korea Maritime University
Kyunghee University
Kyunghee University
Luleå University of Technology
Midcast Engineering
NSWC/CD
Nanyang Polytechnic
Nanyang Polytechnic
National Chung Hsing University
National Taiwan Institute of Technology
Ohio University
Pohang University of Science and Technology
Pohang University of Science and Technology
Ram International
Research Engineers, Inc.
Secom Ltd.
Rockwell Collins Commercial Avionics
Tecnomatix Machining Automation BV
Toshiba Corp.
Toyota Caelum, Inc.
Unigraphics Solutions
University of Leeds
University of Patras
Universitat Stuttgart
University of Manchester
VTT
Volvo IT/Aero
Volvo IT/Aero
Xi'an Jiaotong University

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