Hi Michael,

I'm wondering if STEP would be the right direction to include in the next set of translators for MoI, I've been in the engineering business for about 22 years now and remember when STEP was released in '95 and it was labled the translation format to supersede IGES, but I don't think it's taken off as first thought.

I'm sure you would of done your research but personaly I would really ask the industry who uses tranlators a lot and find out what translation format is 'really' preferred and not what you read, I know that the large manufacturing firms use STEP eg. GM and BOEING to name a few, they use it to translate not only model data also all other data that is attached to that model like Product Data Management, drafting, Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing, but I believe that the majority of the small businesses find STEP a complicated system, because of the different STEP standards so they opt for IGES (reason why IGES is still around) or Parasolid which will translate as a 'true' solid, also I forgot to mention that Parasolid will translate assembled models and stay as seperate assembled solids once translated, compared to IGES where you have to try and seperate the common mating surfaces of each part to try and join them to make separate solids, I believe STEP does this too but I'm not sure which standard.

Which STEP standard are you looking at is it STEP 203 ?

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