Interoperability - The CAD Vendors Speak Out
excerpted from
Full article is available for a fee
Rachael Dalton-Taggart,
March 15, 2007 Interoperability of
CAD data is an emotive subject that has been beaten to near-death over
the years: users complaining, vendors defending, journalists whining.
But the ultimate solution to CAD data interoperability does not seem to
be in evidence - we have a vibrant CAD Translator market. Users still
experience painful moments trying to read CAD files from another system
and are willing to pay for solutions to deal with it. CAD vendors
generally claim to be in agreement with interoperability, yet many users
suspect those same vendors are not trying too hard to find a solution.
Of nine vendors approached, seven responded. The respondents (Alibre,
CoCreate, Dassault Systèmes, Kubotek, PTC, Rhino and UGS) gave some
nice, rounded answers. And those answers correspond perfectly with each
company’s position and strength within the industry.
Q1: Do you believe that 3D CAD file formats should be able to
interoperate?
CoCreate and Kubotek both answered in the affirmative, mentioning that
interoperability is ‘mission critical’ for users. Rhino and UGS
responded with ‘Yes of course,’ while Dassault also said ‘yes.’ PTC gave
the more interesting reply, in that their response failed to answer the
question directly, but ended the statement with “getting CAD formats to
be interoperable at a native level would be extremely challenging.
Q2: According to much anecdotal evidence, there still remains a
problem with interoperability of 3D data between disparate CAD systems.
To what do you attribute the reasons for this problem still existing?
Yannick Wittner, Dassault Systèmes, explains “The challenge for the
industry is to keep up with the pace at which CAD vendors update their
CAD versions. Most of the time a new CAD release would require updating
the CAD translators to keep into account the new features of the new
version.”
Cheryl Salatino, Kubotek, expands on this idea: “As new CAD
functionality develops it is not necessarily compatible with other CAD
vendor systems. Generally this intellectual property offers competitive
advantages and vendors protect their proprietary assets. What troubles
some users is that interoperability problems often occur from one
software revision to the next within the same CAD vendor’s system.”
PTC explains it as follows: “CAD systems are architected differently
with different data models. These differences, in mathematical
definition of geometric shape and also in tolerancing schemes for those
definitions, are the principal reason for disconnects in
interoperability between CAD systems.”
CoCreate has a slightly different approach, one of understanding that 3D
geometry translation is mostly solved by IGES and STEP.
Read more:
Q3: Do you believe that CAD vendors should hold any responsibility
for the interoperability of the 3D file formats they develop? If not,
why?
Q4: Do you feel that there will be any improvement in 3D CAD
interoperability in the foreseeable future and what do you think those
improvements might be?
The
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