Mike Pratt wrote:
> At the next meeting of the STEP development community ISO TC184/SC4,
> 7 - 12 June '98 in Bad Aibling (near Munich), Germany, there will be
> an initial meeting of an RP Interest Group that will probably decide
> to include RP as a new product life-cycle phase within STEP, make
> recommendations for the use of existing STEP APs for RP and develop
> appropriate new resources for the future. The impetus for this is
> coming from Canada, Japan and the USA.
This makes **really** good sense. There have been discussions over the
years, even in recent months, to develop a replacement or alternative to
STL. Getting CAD developers to support yet another output format would
take more blood and sweat than most of us care to shed. Why not 1) carry
"STL data" within the STEP file (as Mike said, STEP AP203 already contains
a faceted boundary representation), 2) ask the RP system manufacturers to
support STEP, and 3) let the user decide whether to use STL data or precise
math surface data (which STEP also carries) when building an RP model?
What could be easier and more flexible?
Terry
Wohlers Associates, Inc.
OakRidge Business Park
1511 River Oak Drive
Fort Collins, CO 80525 USA
(970) 225-0086
Fax (970) 225-2027
twohlers@compuserve.com
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~wohlers
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
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