STEP is the current standard for exchange of CAD data between different software packages. BRL-CAD makes use of the STEPcode libraries to support its step-g converter, but the converter is still in its infancy.

The current importer focuses on AP203 import, and needs to support a large number of data types:

    • Surfaces that are stored individually without Brep superstructure (see, for example, the wing shapes generated by OpenVSP: http://www.openvsp.org/wiki/doku.php?id=step) Even though these are not proper "solids" in the BRL-CAD sense of the term, we can and should import them - if nothing else, we can create one Brep object per surface and then develop post-processing tools to "stitch" the surfaces into a solid.
    • Isolated curves can be brought in as part of sketch primitives.
    • Polygonal data
    • Unorganized triangle mesh data
    • Metadata (in many cases can be mapped to attributes, worst case perhaps store as binary objects...)
    • etc.

Right now our importer is AP203 only - we are also interested in AP203e2, AP214, and AP242.

References

  • src/conv/step
    • this is where the current step-g importers and exporters resides
  • src/other/step
    • this is STEPcode

Requirements

  • Familiarity with C++