What are the capabilities of STEP
Industry-Developed STEP Capabilities
AP-203, Configuration Control for 3D Design of Mechanical Parts and Assemblies, provides a very robust mechanical parts product model geometry transfer capability. This capability has been slow in coming. The solid model capabilities and high numerical geometric precision possible in AP 203 (and all STEP models) required many of the CAD/CAM vendors to push the technology edge of their system's capabilities. CAD vendor's AP-203 geometry transfer capability quality level is now high enough that translated solid models are readily being used to construct NC operations driver files. AP-203, along with AP-224, Mechanical Parts Definition for Process Planning Using Machining Features, has had a significant cost savings impact on mechanical parts manufacturing. AP-224 defines a set of basic solids used for pick-and-place composite solid model structuring, which greatly facilitated parts design and generative process planning (GPP). GPP uses the underlying basic solid shapes of the composite solid to conduct extensive cost-reduction trade-off analysis over the many processing options typically available within a given machine shop.
Cost-reductions of 30 percent are fairly commonplace for GPP process planning relative to the traditional variant process planning. Variant process planning basically consists of using a process plan for a similar old part. Most old parts in DoD's inventory have not been run through a GPP trade-off analysis or anything close to its cost optimization process.