SIEMENS STEPS into action

PDM/STEP CC belongs to the Industrial Project and Technical Services Group of SIEMENS AG. Within technical services the business unit Information Technology "Ind-ustrial solutions" (IT IS) provides a wide range of IT-solutions, tools, services and support ranging from simulation, CAD and control system engineering, process optimization with AIapplications to document management and product data technology.

Being part of a major enterprise focused on electronics and electro-technology we actively took part in the standardisation efforts for the application protocol AP 212 "Electro-technical Design and Installation" which in April this year reached the DIS (draft international standard) status with the IEC commission.

The usage of the AP 212 protocol has revealed that its specific features for modelling properties of functions, devices, connectivity etc respectively procedures and documents are ideally suitable to support any data exchange and data sharing requirements within the lifecycle of electrical products, systems and complete plants.

Besides the AP212 activities our STEP expertise includes knowledge of the STEP description of CAD 3D geometries which enables the optimization of product devel-opment chains where 3D design data are exchanged. The related STEP application protocols are AP214 and AP203 respectively.

In that area we have already developed a STEP interface for the modelling kernel Parasolid and an inhouse system for the design of a piping equipment of a power plant.

For one of our current customers - the Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace - we are implementing the data exchange environment for the STEP based data exchange between the Eurofighter partner companies. In that project we developed several STEP interfaces for PDM and configuration management systems based on the EPM toolkit especially with the usage of EXPRESS-X as the mapping language. The PDM/STEP Competence Centre has realized a software package which enables the quick realization of STEP translators for AP212. This software is used in an implementation project of the German Automotive industry where exchange of cabling data via STEP is prototyped.

For further information, please contact:

Dr Manfred Wagner at manfred.wagner@erl9.siemens.de