Engineering Change Propagation System using STEP

Abstract

Reducing the time for engineering changes can greatly shorten a product's life cycle and improve the productivity of enterprises. This work proposes an approach to engineering change propagation between CAD and product data management (PDM) systems. A system for modeling and triggering changes of models of engineering data, geometries, and features, using STEP AP 214 and AP224, is developed. A change in CAD and PDM systems can propagate along a defined path and trigger a rule by which data of another system are changed. The proposed engineering change propagation (ECP) system provides a flexible, virtually integrated framework to enable engineering change. Affected items and propagation sequences of engineering changes are inferred with the help of an ECP network. Engineering change issued between a STEP-based solid modeling system and a PDM system is implemented and discussed to demonstrate the capability of the ECP system. Change in the feature parameters of a CAD system is propagated and the relevant data, defined in the ECP network, are triggered. Enterprises can use the ECP system to integrate various information systems, such as CAx, PDM, CAPP, ERP, and others, and facilitate collaborative engineering using a virtual framework, to promote competition.