STEP Tools News for Monday December 7 (day late)

Tue Dec 7 11:33:27 EST 1999

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).

-----------------------------------
Super Model Industrial Review Board

The Super Model project is beginning with a bang. We have had great
success with our invitations to join the board. The list below shows
that we will have representatives from users and vendors across the
CAD/CAM and NC industries. Not shown on the list are the
sub-contractors and a range of small users from the Hudson Valley.

Confirmed

1. CADKEY - Bob Bean, John Ryan   
2. GE Fanuc - John Turner 
3. CNC Software (MASTERCAM) - Gary Hargreaves, Beth Bornick 
4. Boeing - King Yee 
5. General Dynamics Tank Automotive  - Carol Tierney 
6. National Center for Manufacturing Sciences - Tony Haynes 
7. NASA - Harry Frisch  
8. Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab - Bob Burleson 
9. NIST - Fred Proctor 
10. General Motors - M.K. (Whitey) Simon 
11. Cambridge Valley Machining - James Moore 
12. IBM (NIIIP Proj. Office) - Paul Horstmann 
13. Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems - Bill Whitecotton
14. Monarch Machine Tools - Jan de Nijs
15. Unigraphics Solutions - Manish Patel
16. Alibre, Inc. - Bob Giese  
17. IBM - Johnny Barnes 

Pending

18. Cincinati Machine
19. Sikorsky Aircraft
20. Pro-Engineer
21. Raytheon
22. Rockwell Collins Avionics
23. Hurco
24. GE Research and Development

-----------------
Database Strategy

The newsletter two weeks ago lead to some confusion on the
future of our database strategy. We will continue to use
ORACLE and other relational databases in our products.  

The Ph.D thesis of David Loffredo showed that our previous
strategy of generating an RDB (SQL) schema from an EXPRESS schema
was flawed because it failed to take proper advantage of the
STEP architecture. 

   http://www.steptools.com/~loffredo/thesis.html

In particular, ST-ORACLE ignored the long reference paths
between entities described by the STEP mapping tables. As the
size of a database grew the time to execute the joins necessary
to follow these paths grew until the performance of a database
for information retrieval became unacceptable.

The ST-Repository ORACLE database uses a new architecture that
stores the reference paths as data. Consequently, the new system
is able to rapidly access all the entity instances related to an
instance in a single data read and its performance is almost the
same when a database contains either 10,000 or 1,000,000 entities.

-----------------------
ST-Viewer Trial Version

A trial version of the ST-Viewer good until December 16th is 
available on our web pages. The trial version is the regular
version with a key that will let you use the product until
December 17th.  At the end of the trial you can exchange
it for a regular version by sending us your registration
information to get a permanent key.

http://www.steptools.com/products/stviewer

------------------
New Class Schedule

The class schedule for next year has been posted to our web site.
The classes include training on EXPRESS, EXPRESS-X, STEP and PDM
and STEP and CAD.

     http://www.steptools.com/training

All five of our classes are available at STEP Tools at the times
shown. They can also be held off-site by arrangement.

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

Summary:
Period Covered: Sun Nov 28 03:25:03 1999 -- Sun Dec  5 03:25:03 1999
Total usage: 79
Successful usage: 75 (95%)
Errors: 4 (5%)

Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	14	0	100%
ap203-acis	31	2	93%
ap203-vrml	8	0	100%
ap203check	1	0	100%
gifviz		1	0	100%
para-step	3	0	100%
step-para	8	0	100%
step2xml	9	0	100%
xml2step	4	2	50%

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

------------------------------------
Summary:
Period Covered: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 -- Sun Dec  5 03:25:26 1999
Total usage: 6884
Successful usage: 5866 (85%)
Errors: 1018 (14%)

Translator	total	errors	success rate

acis-ap203	1290	56	95%
ap203-acis	2434	260	89%
ap203-stl	144	53	63%
ap203-vrml	692	206	70%
ap203-xml	87	18	79%
ap203check	421	38	90%
expfront	124	17	86%
expfront2	147	1	99%
express2html	288	2	99%
expxfront	11	1	90%
gifviz		232	62	73%
iges-ap202	10	0	100%
para-step	175	92	47%
sp203-xml	13	2	84%
step-para	199	109	45%
step2xml	220	19	91%
steptoimage	332	61	81%
xml2step	65	21	67%

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

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

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

Desktop:
* 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 -- desktop tool to view, analyze and annotate STEP data.

Database:
* ST-Repository -- Parts library database for the supply chain with
  services for translating, viewing and editing product data using
  web browsers and desktop applications such as MS Excel and MS Access.

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