Flexible communication between dissimilar CAD/CAM systems

An approach to enhance the flexibility of communication between dissimilar CAD/CAM systems is presented. The proposed method involves techniques that have recently become available from STEP, the emerging ISO standard for the exchange of product data. The key principle of the approach is the specification of the entity domains of the interconnect CAD/CAM systems in the EXPRESS language. If a database system is applied as a central storage facility for the involved systems, then the required database schemes as well as the access software can be automatically derived from the EXPRESS definitions. Results from experiments with a data link between a commercial CAD/CAM system and a commercial database system are presented.<>