What's STEPcode being used for?

[Kc Morris]

Hi Everyone,  

My name is KC Morris and I was one of the original developers of the STEP software that has now become STEPcode.  I'm really delighted to see that it is still being actively used.  

I was hoping you all might help me out by dropping me a note as to how it is being used.  I'm trying to describe the impact of the original work and I think it would be quite helpful to have a few statements from people who are still using it.  Things I'm interested in knowing are what you are using it for, what industry you are working in, what standard you are using it with (which STEP AP or other standard or something of your own making), has it saved you or your users time, effort, or allowed you to do something you may not have done otherwise.  Links to any projects it's been used for or other success stories would also be great.  I'd also like to hear of expectations for using it in any new software or projects.

Your response need not be long, nor cover all these things.  More detail is nice but even a short statement would be useful. 

Thanks in advance for your help and happy coding.

KC Morris

[Clifford Yapp]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 8:30 PM, Kc Morris <k...@nist.gov> wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> My name is KC Morris and I was one of the original developers of the STEP
> software that has now become STEPcode. I'm really delighted to see that it
> is still being actively used.
>
> I was hoping you all might help me out by dropping me a note as to how it is
> being used. I'm trying to describe the impact of the original work and I
> think it would be quite helpful to have a few statements from people who are
> still using it.

BRL-CAD uses STEPcode in it's converter for the STEP AP203 CAD data
exchange format. We're looking into AP203e2, AP214 and AP242 as well,
but AP203 is the one we have done the most work on.

Cheers,
CY

[TomThurman]

Hi KC!

I have asked a couple of AP 210 implementors to respond to you.

Regards,

Tom Thurman

[Rob McDonald]

KC,

Thanks for all your work.

I maintain OpenVSP (www.openvsp.org) -- a parametric geometry tool that originated at NASA, but 'left the ranch' when it was released as open source in 2012. It is still heavily used (and development is supported) by NASA, but releases are independent.

OpenVSP uses STEPCode to write AP203 files that currently contain only B_SPLINE_SURFACE_WITH_KNOTS entities (and the boilerplate to support them).  Someday we may write full BREP's, but that isn't in the works.  OpenVSP does no STEP import whatsoever.

STEPCode allows us to support workflows that start in OpenVSP and then transition to CAD/CAM/CFD/FEA/etc. tools.

We have similar support (added much more recently) for IGES that relies on http://cbernardo.github.io/libIGES/ .  In both cases, supporting these formats would have been impractical without a high quality library to get us started.

I also contributed the ap203min example to the STEPCode source to serve as a starting point for others who follow down this path -- it is very similar to what appears in OpenVSP.

Rob

[Anton Shabalin]

Hello, KC,

I am using STEPCode in my project called GePARD-3D. It's a Computer Aided Tolerancing system. 

We are using AP203 and AP214 for import geometry data from several CAD systems to GePARD-3D. 

And also I would like to thank you for such a useful library.

Regards, 

Shabalin A.