Converting from STEP files to BRL-CAD databases
BRL-CAD's most pressing need in the geometry file conversion category is support for the STEP file format, a.k.a "STandard for the Exchange of Product model data." Step is a successor to the IGES file format and today is the major standard used for data exchange between CAD systems.
Partial Support
currently the tool step-g has partial support, and the toolkit https://github.com/stepcode/stepcode is branched into the src/other source tree.
Defining ISO Documents
The source standard for STEP is ISO-10303, which consists of hundreds of individual parts. (list parts important to brlcad)
Existing Open Source Tools
Tools that work with EXPRESS (ISO10303 Part 11) schemas
Tools that generate C++ from an EXPRESS schema
- NIST STEP Class Libraries
- There is a patched version of the SCL that compiles with GCC 4.6
- Official NIST SCL site
- ESA and NASA also have some tools (expressik, lightcpp, pyexpress)
that can generate code from EXPRESS schema. For some years, ESA has
planned to release some (or all) of the code as open source;
however, they have many higher priorities (per email with a person
at ESA).
- Relevant google searches:
- IFC contains code generated by lightcpp, but does not include lightcpp. Contains some info on lightcpp.