Capvidia has joined PDES Inc. to further extend its STEP interface implementation and contribute to projects aimed at Long Term Archival and Retrieval (LOTAR) of Digital Product and Technical Data.  The LOTAR project is led by major aerospace companies such as Boeing, Airbus, and EADS.

Participation in PDES gives us an insight into industry directions and requirements for integrating with suppliers, developing strong customer relationships and participation in pilot projects with them, new business with leading companies, and insight into industry requirements for product data exchange. Based on these inputs we will extend our products to include the latest industry standards.
 
PDES, Inc. is a member-supported consortium accelerating the development and implementation of standards ISO 10303, commonly known as STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product model data) to support model-based engineering, manufacturing and sustainment. STEP provides an unambiguous, computer sensible description of the physical and functional characteristics of a product throughout its life cycle.

Capvidia’s participation in PDES Inc. gives us an opportunity to stay up-to-date with the latest STEP development and extensions. Our intention is to provide those latest standards as part of our products for 3D CAD data translation, validation and quality assessment. 
 
A common practice in today’s industry is to combine 3D CAD model with additional information such as PMI (Product Manufacturing Information). This type of information has traditionally being transferred in form of 2D drawings. As many companies go away from 2D documentation a capability to save 2D information in neutral, widely readable, data format is increasing.

PMI information can be now stored in STEP format using special STEP AP 203 E2 extensions for configuration controlled 3D designs of mechanical parts and assemblies.  Major CAD vendors (Dassault Systems, Siemens, Pro/E) are now supporting the extended STEP AP 203 E2 format allowing more smooth and advanced CAD data interoperability. Capvidia is currently implementing these emerging new standards in its CAD related products.