The State of STEP

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The State of STEP
Achievements and Challenges

• Stephen C. Waterbury
• NASA/GSFC

NASA STEP for Aerospace Workshop January 17,
2001 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Translators

• Mechanical CAD

• Almost every COTS MCAD tool has a STEP translator

• Electrical/Electronic CAD

• 1 COTS translator, more being developed

• Computer-Aided Engineering (Analysis)

• 1 COTS translator, more being developed

• Product Data Management (PDM)

• Some COTS translators, more being developed

• Systems Engineering

• No translators (AP is a Working Draft)

• Potential benefits are huge funding is needed

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Toolkits and Utilities

• Translator development toolkits

• Several high-quality COTS toolkits

• Enterprise application development toolkits

• Several high-quality COTS toolkits some
  open-source components

• Data Utilities (validation, quality,
  administration)

• Several high-quality COTS tools some open-source
  tools

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Special Cases

• Integrated manufacturing (CAD-to-NC, etc.)

• High-quality toolkits are now emerging

• Design / Analysis integration (CAD/CAE)

• Some COTS translators more capabilities being
  developed

• CAD / CAE / PDM integration

• Very rudimentary CAD/CAE tools evolving
  toolkits being developed

• Thermal Analysis for Space (STEP-TAS)

• Broad acceptance translators viewers more
  being developed

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Challenges

• STEP / OMG interoperability

• Data (STEP) and API (OMG) are inherently
  complementary

• Essential for robust applications, plug-and-play

• Coverage of data exchange, sharing,
  collaboration, and archiving

• Enterprise applications

• XML is an important part of the solution

• Also needed high-level APIs and language
  interfaces (e.g. Python)

• Multi-disciplinary capabilities

• Systems Engineering

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Multi-Disciplinary CapabilitiesModel
Integration and Systems Engineering

• Modularization

• Mappings

(Express-X, e.g.)

• Transformations

Spacecraft X Master Model
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STEP Resources on the Web

• NASA STEP Central the main NASA site for STEP
  information --http//step.nasa.gov
• The NASA STEP Testbed supporting NASAs
  implementation of STEP --http//step.nasa.gov/tes
  tbed
• Expresso for 95/NT (free download) --
  http//www.nist.gov/expresso
• Note if interested in the Linux version of
  Expresso, contact Steve Waterbury
• PDES, Inc. a government-industry consortium
  implementing STEP --http//pdesinc.scra.org
• STEP On-Line Information Service (SOLIS) --
  http//www.nist.gov/sc4
• STEP On A Page (a capsule summary and current
  status of STEP) -- http//www.nist.gov/sc5/soap
• USPRO (U.S. Product Data Association),
  distributor for STEP documents --https//www.uspr
  o.org
• The OMG Manufacturing Domain Task Force (MfgDTF)
  PDM Enablers, etc. --http//www.omg.org/homepage
  s/mfg