Overview

ST-Viewer is an interactive tool for viewing 3D product data and gives users inexpensive access to 3D CAD information. ST-Viewer includes functions to display and relate product identification information, assembly structure information, and 3D geometry information. Annotations can be made on this information and sent between users. Visualizations of solids and wire frame models can be cut and pasted into other tools and printed.

ST-Viewer utilizes the ISO STEP standard for product model data. The viewer leverages ten years of work by more than 500 CAD experts to create a robust open format for CAD, CAM and CAE data. With the viewer you can ensure your CAD data conforms to the international standard for product data so that it is ready for customers and suppliers in the United States, Europe and the Far East.

The tool can now work with ST-Viewer Packaged files, with extension .stv. These files include STEP and expanded data in one file. To open this kind of files you do not need a license key. Numerous samples are included for all supported APs.

ST-Viewer works with a very large range of CAD, CAM, CAE and PDM systems. The STEP interface of these systems are built and maintained by their vendors and monitored for conformance to the standard by national industry groups and the International Standards Organization. ST-Viewer supports the following STEP APs:

• AP 203
• AP 209
• AP 210
• AP 214
• AP 216
• AP 218
• AP 224
• AP 227

Following is a list of systems that have been tested with the ST-Viewer:

• Alias Wavefront
• AUTOCAD
• CADKEY
• CATIA
• CoCreate
• Microstation
• Parasolid
• Patran
• Pro/ENGINEER
• SDRC Ideas
• SolidEdge
• SolidWorks
• IronCAD
• UNIGRAPHICS

Graphics samples can be found on the ST-Viewer sample page. The STEP Tools, Inc. web site also contains a free translation service that can be used to translate other kinds of CAD files to STEP.

ST-Viewer can be extended using an OLE/COM interface. The ST-Visualizer tool from STEP Tools lets application programmers create applications that use ST-Viewer to highlight or pick the geometry or assembly structure of a product. An application built using the ST-Visualizer can link to an ST-Viewer installed on the same machine using OLE/COM.

ST-Viewer reads many kinds of STEP files and generates visualizations in the Open Inventor file format. Open Inventor lets you to create a visualization state for a product model with transformations, colors, light sources, and text annotations. The images produced by ST-Viewer can be translated into the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) and incorporated into technical presentations on the World Wide Web.