Seeking intelligent product development - an integrator environment based on STEP

Rapid Prototyping (RP) is an emerging technology with different application s in the cycle of product and process development used during the conceptua l and specification phases. To support it, the usage of a Data Base Managem ent System (DBMS) and an Expert Systems (ES) are important to manage the da ta, support the identification of errors and check product conformance and production viability during this cycle, seeking intelligent product develop ment. The underlying concept of RP and ES is very straight forward, but still exi sts a major problem that concerns the integration in the CAD/CAM environmen t. CAD data can have a variety of formats depending on the model used in th e CAD system, as well as on ES' data and knowledge structure, that usually relies on the expert system shell's where it was developed. To support and speed up the integration process of these tools in a manufac turing environment, is essential to have an integrator environment where a standard is adopted for the data and knowledge exchange process, providing the software applications with a neutral format interface, becoming these t ools open and standard compliant, ready to be used in any other standard en vironment. UNINOVA, in the scope of European and National projects, develop ed a STEP-based Platform for Integration of applications (SIP) to support a nd aid the software integration in industrial environments using the standa rd ISO10303-STEP, already used in different industrial domains. This paper addresses the integration aspects using STEP within industrial environments from the technical point of view, and proposes an architecture and a toolk it for the integrator environment, highlighting the implementation efforts required to have RP technology, ES and DBMS focused towards a STEP-based in telligent product development.