What is STEP
The STEP (Standard for External Representation of Product Data) project is supported by the ISO workgroup TC 184/SC4. it is also sometimes called Standard for Exchange of Product Definition Data. It is an effort by this group to develop an international standard for representing product model and a data exchange is a series of standards intended to provide a common mechanism for representing product model data throughout the life-cycle of a product independent of any application software that may be used to process it. The basic principles of STEP are shown in Figure 7.16. The figure shows a computer-integrated manufacturing system where CAD data is tightly coupled via the STEP interface to the main production activities such as CAP, PP and C, CAM and CAQ. STEP will be replacing the most of the standards developed so far above. The series of standards \in STEP provide a neutral representation of product model data in the form of a set of integrated resources that support a complete and unambiguous definition of a product. The resource constructs are documented in a single product data language definition as discussed in Mason (1991).