Viewpoint -- Now You're Speaking My Language

In the June 11 issue (The Costs of CAD Incompatibility) of IndustryWeek I detailed the problem suppliers to the automotive industry face when it comes to product design. The problem: Each automaker has specified vendors that must design in the CAD system of the automaker's choice, and each of the major automakers specify different CAD systems. Vendors -- bowing to the demands of the all-powerful automakers -- must equip, staff, and operate in all three CAD systems to cover the industry, which is costly, at least. But even that doesn't address the problems that automakers bring upon themselves when they, for instance, acquire foreign automakers who operate on different CAD systems. They then have a compatibility issue in their own house. But what if the three CAD systems could somehow talk to each other, read each other's data? What if there were some kind of universal language they could all communicate in, would that solve the problem? Certainly this is not a new idea. In fact, a universal translation "language" was proposed years ago by the International Standards Organization (ISO) in the form of STEP standards. This neutral CAD format is a data output option on virtually all CAD systems, and serves as an intermediary language that virtually all CAD systems can likewise understand. However, this neutral output of CAD data only reflects the end result of all the design engineering that went into a 3-D CAD design model. It doesn't give any information as to how the designer arrived at his part, component, or assembly. It's like learning the facts at school, but not learning the great masters' thought processes, how they discovered the truths. This makes it difficult, even impossible for anyone receiving the CAD file to modify it. Why? Because designers don't just make drawings in the air when they design. They assign features with parameters. A hole is not a circle; it may be a cylinder carved out of the body of a part. Or the hole may have some relationships or restraints tied to other features of the design. In the business this is called design history or design intent and the receiver of a stripped down STEP file must try to recreate these relationships if he has any hope of doing any significant design iteration. In fact, he might as well start from scratch, which is often what happens. Even as the industry struggles, there are some new standards and translation technologies surfacing that could address the translation problem. To wit: