Collaboration
     & Interoperability
                            Congress - May 3-5, 2010

Nathan Hartman, Assistant Professor
Purdue University

Given the geographically dispersed product design and manufacturing scenarios that are commonplace in industry today, companies are grappling with decisions regarding the use of specific formats and mechanisms to promote communication and collaboration processes. Current solutions tend to center on “lightweight” file formats as one of the enabling technologies that support this distributed collaboration. The recent availability of these visualization file formats has caused confusion and uncertainty in industry relative to their use in specific situations, especially when trying to capture annotations, accurate geometry, and manufacturing information for example. This paper will present preliminary work being done to address this challenge by comparing the functionality available (e.g., colors, layers, 3D text, B-rep solids, and assemblies) in the STEP AP 203 E2 format with that found in the current JT, 3dXML , and U3D formats. A discussion of the applicability of these formats base don the findings will also be included.

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Biography

Nathan Hartman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Graphics Technology at Purdue University. His academic interests include the use of constraint-based CAD tools in the design process, the development of expertise and knowledge in the use of 3D computer graphics tools, interoperability and data exchange, and the use of virtual reality in PLM environments.