A PRODUCT DATA EXCHANGE INTEGRATION STRUCTURE USING PDES STEP FOR AUTOMATED MANUFACTURING APPLICATIONS/

This article describes an integration structure of product data exchan ge with PDES/STEP using object-oriented approach for automated manufac turing applications. A data carrier is provided for the data operation al process in the integration structure, In the data carrier, these da ta are derived from previous operations and the CAD data are translate d into a neutral file that is based on the EXPRESS language representa tion and PDES/STEP data definition. As an international standard of pr oduct data exchange, PDES;STEP is intended to provide-information for all engineering applications without considering hardware, software, o r processes. This application of the integrated structure with a neutr al file is explained by an example on an HP/UNIX X Window system using object-oriented programming, CLIPS inference software, and I-DEAS sof tware.