Troy, New York - October 17, 2002 - STEP Tools, Inc. , the forerunner in developing STEP and STEP-NC software solutions for the global marketplace, announced today the company will participate in three major industry events in the month of October 2002. On October 22nd, Dr. Hardwick, president and CEO, will travel to Southfield, Michigan to participate in the Metrology Interoperability Project Team Meeting held at the AIAG (Automotive Industry Action Group) headquarters. This team works to reduce product development cycle time and manufacturing costs by achieving interoperability of software and hardware components used in automated metrology. The group reviews current standards and develops user requirements to provide as input to industry standards developing organizations like STEP Tools, Inc. STEP (Standard for Product Data Exchange) is an ISO standard for CAD design data. STEP-NC, the manufacturing extension of this standard, annotates this design information with manufacturing data.
On October 21 and 22, 2002, Dr. David Loffredo will attend Boeing's 5th Annual Product Data Exchange Conference held in Huntsville, AL. He will present "Digital Manufacturing using STEP-NC" during the two-day event. Dr. Loffredo is the Vice President of Product Development at STEP Tools, and is currently developing the AP-238 integrated STEP-NC model. Since 1988, Loffredo has developed software that supports the ISO 10303 STEP standard. Dr. Loffredo will discuss how STEP-NC will enable Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools and drive them with full fidelity 3D design data derived from any CAD system. He will explain how an external software program like a Process Planning system or an integrated CAD/CAM system, can create instructions for making a part on a machine tool and send those instructions (via DNC, LAN, WAN or the Internet) to a CNC milling machine containing an embedded CAM system.
Earlier in the month, Dr. Martin Hardwick presented "STEP-NC: Machining the Future" and demonstrated STEP-NC to over 50 participants during a live NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Webcast. This Webcast was the 7th in a series of "Technology Briefing" web conferences designed to help communicate knowledge to the MEP network about the latest ideas, strategies and solutions for SMEs from the world of Information Technology. Dr.Hardwick is the STEP Manufacturing leader in the international STEP community of over 200 independent product data specialists.