STEP Tools News for Tuesday April 10

[Martin Hardwick]

This 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 
at http://www.steptools.com

----------------------------------- 
AP for Computational Fluid Dynamics

A New Work Item for a CFD Application Protocol is being balloted 
for inclusion in STEP. The new AP will complement the existing 
STEP Application Protocol for Structural Dynamics: AP-209.


------------------------------ 
4th Super Model Meeting

The fourth Super Model meeting will be held in Troy on June
4th and 5th. At this meeting potential users and implementors
of STEP-NC will give feedback on their requirements for:

* PDM, CAM and CNC savings
* Implementation Platforms
* e-Manufacturing and Supply Chain management
* Early deployment

The meeting will also feature the official opening of the North
American STEP-NC Center and a Super Model demonstration.  with three
transactions being applied to a Super-Model database:

* CAD Transaction (->AP-203)
* CAM Transaction (AP-203 -> AP-238)
* CNC Transaction (AP-238 -> milling)


---------------------------------------- 
Web Services Description Language (WSDL)

The "final" layer has been added to the W3C infrastructure for running
applications over the web. This layer allows an application server to
describe the kinds of messages that it will service over the web. The
layer assumes that the message will be transported to the server using
the SOAP communication protocols and the XML data format.

WSDL is being proposed as an Internet standard by Microsoft and IBM.
Unlike OMG IDL, WSDL assumes that a service supplier will want to
describe the requirements and results of each service completely and
unambigously. This fits better with the STEP philosophy of producing
Complete, Unambiguous Product Models (sometimes called CUPMs).
 
STEP Tools will be using WSDL to describe web services for its
ship building and STEP-NC projects. The services will use EXPRESS-X
to unambiguosly describe the meaning of each transaction by showing
how each XML argument and result of a message is related to the data
in a STEP data model.


--------------------------- 
Translation Service 
Period Covered: Sun Apr 1 03:25:02 2001 -- Sun Apr 8 03:25:02 2001 
Total usage: 113 
Successful usage: 109 (96%) 
Errors: 4 (3%)

Translator              total errors success rate
ACIS to STEP:           44      0       100% 
STEP to ACIS:           44      1       97% 
AP203 Checker:          1       0       100% 
CEB XML Writer:         1       0       100% 
Parasolid to STEP:      13      0       100% 
STEP to Parasolid:      4       3       25%
======================================= 
All-Time stats
------------------------------------ 
Summary: 
Period Covered: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 -- Sun Apr 8 03:25:45 2001 
Total usage: 12797 
Successful usage: 11516 (89%) 
Errors: 1281 (10%)


------------------------------------------ 
Tools From STEP Tools, Inc.

The world's foremost firms use the STEP Tools product line to help
them share engineering product information. Over one million people
use product data applications built with ST-Developer, the company's
flagship product.

Manufacturing Tools: 
* ST-Repository -- WSDL/SOAP services for sharing STEP-CAD, STEP-PDM
and STEP-NC data with the supply chain.


Programming Tools: 
* ST-Developer -- programming tools for writing STEP 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.


Desktop Tools: 
* 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 dimension STEP data.

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