[step-manufacturing] Draft minutes for T24 in Bath

[Martin Hardwick]

All,

Thank you for a very successful meeting in Bath. This was perhaps
our busiest meeting to date so I would like to complete the
minutes as soon as possible to make sure that everything is
properly documented.

Below are the proposed minutes. Please let me know if there
are any errors and also let me know if there are any issues that
I have missed or not properly documented.

It is very important for these minutes to be a fair record of
the meeting.

If you made a presentation at the meeting that I did not collect
in Bath please send me a copy so that I can include it in the
archive on the web site.

Martin Hardwick
Team Leader Wg3/T24 STEP-Manufacturing


1. AP Projects.

The following is the status of the AP projects.

a. AP-219 Inspection Data and Results

No work performed on this project since the last meeting
due to funding problems. The plan is for work to recommence
in July and for the CD document to be completed by the
fourth quarter.


b. AP-223 Castings

No work performed on this project since the last meeting
because the editor was working on AP-240. Work will
recommence shortly and the CD document should be ready in the
fourth quarter. 

The project is trying to determine how much forging information
should be included in the AP and will welcome feedback from
end-users.


c. AP-224 Edition 3 and AIC 522 Manufacturing Features

AIC 522 is being updated to include definitions for gear and
requirements from AP-238 to clarify the volume of a feature
when it is being used to define material removal volume for AP-238.

AP-224 Edition 3 should be published in the third quarter.

The AP-224 team gave a presentation on the winning business case
they presented to the UK Navy for deploying AP-224 in the shipyard.
The business case showed how short term savings can be achieved
by reducing inventory for parts with an AP-224 description.


d. AP-238 Integrated CNC

A working draft of the AP-238 DIS was published just before the
meeting. The new document includes both milling and turning. The
ARM requirements for PDM have been documented. The differences
between the AP-224 features and the ISO 14649 features have been
documented. Both sets of documentation have been broken out into
a separate specification available on the STEP Tools web site.

Two remaining items need to be completed before the DIS is sent 
out for review. The first is the inclusion of the GD&T definitions.
A lot of time was spent during the meeting to harmonize the AP-224 
GD&T definitions with the AP-214 definitions (see below). The
harmonized definitions will be included in AP-238.

The second item is the inclusion of any updates necessary to fully
support the usage of explicitly defined tool paths in AP-238. Some
potential requirements have been identified by the early users and
STEP Tools will work with these users to refine and document them
in the DIS.


e. AP-240 Process Planning

AP-240 successfully completed its ballot resolution workshop in Japan.
Work will begin on the IS version. The plan is to submit the IS in
the fourth quarter.

A Process Planning demonstration using AP-240 was given by 
the Japanese delegation. The demonstration showed how AP-240 can
be used to plan which features will be manufactured on which
machines in a manufacturing enterprise.


2. ISO 14649 Projects

A final IS release of the ISO 14649-11 model for milling should be
issued by ISO in Geneva shortly. The DIS version of the ISO 14649-12
model for turning is currently out for ballot. 

The SC1/Wg7 team responsible for ISO 14649 and STEP Manufacturing
agreed on a path forward for STEP-NC harmonization as documented in 
Section 4 of these minutes.

A new model for inspection processes has been developed by WZL
in Germany and will be presented to SC1/Wg7 in Zurich at their
next meeting from September 14 to 16. 


3. GD&T Harmonization

This issue is very important because the community wants the CAD vendors
to start exporting GD&T information with their CAD models using STEP.
The vendors have reasonably objected that different AP's are using 
different definitions for their GD&T information so the harmonization
of these definitions was an important goal for the whole of SC4 in the
Bath meeting.

Almost half the time of T24 in Bath was spent on this issue. The meeting
appears to have been successful. At the end of the meeting there was one
remaining issue that needed to be reviewed by the larger AP-214 team
before it could be accepted by their representatives.

The next step is to develop test cases for presentation at the next
SC4 meeting in Seattle.


4. STEP-NC Harmonization

The SC1 team argues that ISO 14649 is simpler to implement and perhaps
more efficient to execute (strongly disputed by T24). The T24 team argues
that AP-238 is integrated with the rest of STEP. In particular it uses the
same feature definitions, the same GD&T definitions, the same PDM definitions
and the same process definitions.

Fortunately there is also general agreement that the new CNC exchange format
needs to be XML instead of Part 21, and the increased power of XML means
that the AP-238 data can be simplified to be more like ISO 14649 data.

STEP Tools showed a new tool at the meeting called XDM STEP that converts
ISO 14649 data to AP-238 data automatically using meta data derived from
the STEP mapping tables. The new tool outputs an XML format that shows 
how each ISO 14649 object is represented in the AP-238 AIM XML. 

There was agreement that provided the new format is fully documented by
SC4 and provided some changes are made to some of the AP-238 mappings to
make them clearer, then SC1 will adopt the new AIM XML format as the CNC
data exchange standard.

The changes to the mappings were agreed in a special session hosted by
Wg12. To make the mappings clearer the action_method_relationship entity
will be sub-typed and the new sub-types will be used to make the required
type of the "relating" and "related" entity in each relationship clearer.

STEP Tools is making the XDM STEP tool available to anyone with interest 
free of charge. 


5. Cutting Tool Catalogs and Machining Databases

The TC29 ISO 13399 standard for cutting tooling catalogs is making considerable 
progress. AP-238 and AP-240 reference these catalogs. 

A new project is starting within SC1 to define a standard for machining
tools. 


6. SASIG Digital Manufacturing

The SASIG Digital Manufacturing team met with T24 to discuss new technical and
business opportunities. The team is defining a mission statement and wants to
harvest the results of T24's work. The group welcomes input from potential
technical contributors and business users.