STEP Tools Translator for Shipbuilding

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Troy, New York, June 3, 1999

A STEP translator built using STEP Tools software is included in the Vivid ship building software. Newport News Shipbuilding licensed the ST-ACIS libraries from STEP Tools, Inc. in 1996. During 1997 and 1998, they used these libraries to build translators for the STEP shipbuilding standards. These standards include AP-216 for Ship hull forms and AP-218 for Ship steel structures. Newport News is a major contractor for the US Navy. It is the sole supplier of nuclear powered aircraft carriers and the joint supplier of nuclear powered submarines.

The ST-ACIS library is a set of function calls for translating STEP geometry to ACIS geometry and vice versa. The product has been on the market since 1995 and is included in the STEP translators of CADKEY 98, Hitachi Zosen Grade/Cube II, Visionary Design Systems IRONCAD and numerous private systems. Blair Downie, Vice President for Product Development at STEP Tools, Inc., stated that the "inclusion of a STEP Tools translator in Vivid shows that STEP technology can be applied to a wide range of application domains including shipping".

The ISO Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) grew from the need to represent digital product information for design and manufacturing. STEP accelerates the flow of product information, including CAD geometry, within and between engineering activities. The ability to condense and manage all the data related to a part, a process, or any related function can produce significant improvements in productivity. Using STEP, information pertaining to initial design, revisions, bill of materials, production, performance, and so on, can be centrally stored and electronically shared through networks, from LANs to the Internet.

STEP Tools, Inc., founded in 1991, provides software tools based on ISO STEP. STEP Tools products leverage STEP technology to facilitate the sharing of engineering product information for worldwide design and manufacturing. These products provide the flexibility of EXPRESS information modeling language, integration with existing tools and database systems, cross-platform portability, and ease-of-use. STEP Tools is the leading source of software for the ISO STEP community with over 300 customer sites worldwide, including many Fortune 100 companies.

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