NIIIP Demo - June, 1995 in Washington DC 


Date:    Thu, 22 Jun 1995 06:47:19 EDT
To:      sc4@cme.nist.gov
From:    hardwick@rdrc.rpi.edu
Subject: demo at Washington
STEP Tools, Inc. and RPI will show the following demonstration at the upcoming ISO STEP meeting in Washington DC. Room announcements will be posted at the meeting. Demonstrations will be shown at 5PM and 7PM on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

More information on the NIIIP program [National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols] can be found at http://www.niiip.org This preview demonstration shows some of the technologies being developed by NIIIP.

Industrial Data on the World Wide Web

Organizations that can share product data with their customers and suppliers will get products to the market more quickly. The recently released ISO STEP Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data describes data that can be understood by any organization anywhere in the world. In this demonstration we show how STEP data can be made available to customers and suppliers on the Internet using the World Wide Web.

The demonstration will include:

The demonstration shows how multiple users at multiple locations can access a product database using STEP, the Internet and the World Wide Web. Therefore, each user can work on his or her part of the product, concurrently. In this early demonstration, the users only access the product data. At this years CALS EXPO we plan to show how they can access and edit product data.

When the vision shown by the demonstration is fully realized, enterprises will be able to share their product data with any other organization. Faster communication of product data will reduce the time required to bring a product to market resulting in reduced costs and considerable market advantages. Some parts of this demonstration can be deployed in your organizations today.

Technologies Used:

The EXPRESS model of the AP203 ARM describes a STEP data set at a higher level using the units of functionality (UOF). Using an AP-203 AIM to ARM mapping, the EXPRESS-V language processor creates an ARM model view of the AP-203 data written by Pro/Engineer. The Part 21 file for the data set is then divided into modules for each UOF. The AP203 ARM defines a key for each module. The keys maintain references between the modules. They are also used to identify when new modules are to replace modules already existing in the database.

Next, to make the database available for Web browsing, the STEP to HTML compiler creates web pages with icons for each module in the database. The icons are organized into folders for easy navigation. Descriptive attributes for each icon are identified by the EXPRESS ARM model. Relationships between the modules (units of functionality) are also described by the EXPRESS ARM model. The user can navigate between modules using these relationships as well as the folders.

Selecting an icon delivers the data in that module to the local workstation. If the data is a shape then it can be edited using the local favorite CAD tool (AutoCAD, Pro/Engineer or a STEP visualizer in the demonstration). If the data is of another type ( configuration control, assembly, etc) then it can be browsed using a series of forms (not yet shown in the demonstration).

All tools are invoked automatically using conventions built into the World Wide Web, and the tools are linked using OMG CORBA. When the user picks an icon, the correct version of that part of the STEP database is loaded into his or her CAD or PDM system.

[ STEP Examples ]