It´s important because the have a great CAD formats support:
ACAD,DXF,EUCLID,IGES, STEP, Jack, STL, tankill, VRML, wavefront,
X3D,Elysium Neutral Facetted, Unigraphics, Pro/E, FASTGEN
here we have a good explanation of STEP by Sean Morrison in
freearchitecture talking with Lars Grove and Eric hehe:
https://www.email-lists.org/pipermail/freearchitecture/2006-May/000079.html
regards.