STEP Tools News for Monday October 12

Tue Oct 12 14:20:34 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).

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Information and Organization Meetings for "Super Model"

MDICM is the $2.9M Model Driven Intelligent Control of Manufacturing
project awarded to STEP Tools and a team of sub-contractors by the ATP
program last week. We are going to give this project the informal name
"Super Model" for reasons to be explained below.

    http://www.atp.nist.gov/www/comps/index99.htm

An organizational meeting for the Industrial Review Board (IRB) of
Super Model will be held at STEP Tools on December 2 and 3. The
meeting will begin in the afternoon of Thursday December 2. There will
be a celebration reception in the evening and the meeting will end
immediately after lunch on December 3.

Membership of the IRB will be decided by the organizational meeting.
The group will meet twice per year after the first meeting to review
the progress of the project and see demonstrations. A limited amount
of money is included in the budget for us to organize these meetings.

The Verification, Implementation and Promotion (VIP) board will be a
sister group of organizations that want to run projects to verify that
STEP-NC is a superior data standard for their manufacturing processes.
The VIP board will take advantage of the technologies being developed
by STEP Tools for Super Model. Unlike the IRB, the VIP is expected to
continue after the end of the Super Model project.

The IRB and VIP will be combined for the first meeting so that
participants can decide whether they want to observe or participate
in the project. We are in the process of writing invitation letters.
If you would like to be included in the mailing list please send us
your address and phone number.

-----------------------------------
Benefits of the Super Model Project

Super Model is a three year project. The goal is to build a database that
contains all the information required to make a part, in other words a
Super Model. A super model must include design information such as geometry,
manufacturing planning information such as form features, and manufacturing
strategy information such as tool selection.

The benefits of a Super Model have been shown many times. They include a 35%
reduction in the cost of process planning and a 75% reduction in the
cost of shop floor control. The problem that has been inhibiting the
realization of these benefits is the lack of a database that can
build, store and deliver the required information to shop floor tools
and users.

The Super Model database will be defined by the STEP and STEP-NC standards.
The project is challenging and unique because of the range of
information that must be integrated into the database. Data will be
sent to the database by CAD, CAM and process planning tools. Until now
STEP has been implemented as a data exchange process, but for Super
Model the tools must be able to add their information to an existing
database.  A principle deliverable of the project will be easy to use
lbraries that make it reasonable for downstream manufacturing tools to
annotate and extend information defined by upstream design tools.

The target for the first year is to build a STEP and STEP-NC database
containing three kinds of manufacturing features, and use the database
to drive a machine tool controller.  The target for the second year is
to build a database containing all the features defined by the STEP-NC
milling schema and use that database to manufacture the STEP-NC test
part (available on request to all ST-Viewer customers). The target for
the third year is to build and manufacture a database for another
machining process such as turning, EDM or grinding.

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

Summary:
Period Covered: Sun Oct  3 03:25:02 1999 -- Sun Oct 10 03:25:02 1999
Total usage: 226
Successful usage: 203 (89%)
Errors: 23 (10%)

Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	10	0	100%
ap203-acis	115	7	93%
ap203-vrml	16	6	62%
ap203check	50	1	98%
expfront2	6	0	100%
express2html	4	0	100%
gifviz		1	0	100%
step-para	4	3	25%
step2xml	4	0	100%
steptoimage	13	3	76%
xml2step	3	3	0%

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

------------------------------------
Summary:
Period Covered: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 -- Sun Oct 10 03:25:23 1999
Total usage: 6197
Successful usage: 5276 (85%)
Errors: 921 (14%)

Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	1165	52	95%
ap203-acis	2201	232	89%
ap203-stl	135	48	64%
ap203-vrml	637	191	70%
ap203-xml	87	18	79%
ap203check	340	35	89%
expfront	124	17	86%
expfront2	141	1	99%
express2html	284	2	99%
expxfront	11	1	90%
gifviz		212	57	73%
iges-ap202	10	0	100%
para-step	146	80	45%
sp203-xml	13	2	84%
step-para	159	92	42%
step2xml	175	18	89%
steptoimage	313	59	81%
xml2step	44	16	63%

---------
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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