Utilization of STEP AP 210 at The Boeing Company

Boeing has been working on the development and implementation of STEP AP 210 since its inception. Using a combination of internally funded activities, external government contracts and multi-company pilots, Boeing has developed prototype tools to utilize AP 210 and is poised to move these tools into production. This paper begins with a brief overview of STEP and AP 210. The status of available AP 210 vendor translators (data generators), along with viewers and analysis programs (data consumers) is covered. Discussion continues with present and planned usage of AP 210 in several companies with the primary emphasis on implementation at The Boeing Company. The document concludes with a summary of key points. 1. Background Application Protocol 210 (AP 210) [1] is the STandard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP) [2] Application Protocol representing the design of electronic assemblies, their interconnection and packaging, Printed Wiring Assemblies (PWAs) and Printed Wiring Boards (PWBs). In April 1999, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) voted to accept STEP AP 210 as an International Standard: after 7 years in development, numerous government contracts performing testing and validation and countless hours contributed by the developers from a number of Fortune 500 companies, AP 210 has become a standard. Companies, to numerous other PDES, Inc., member companies have supplied extensive resources to the AP 210 development effort. These companies contributed to the standards effort to ensure its successful completion and ensure that AP 210 would support their needs now and long into the future. 2. STEP overview The most prevalent requirement of industry today is the need to exchange and/or share product information within and across enterprises. This activity becomes almost impossible without a standardized, computer-processable method of representing and communicating the data. STEP provides a common method of de®ning product data, so it can be easily interpreted and used by any application, throughout the life cycle of the product. STEP is suitable for the standardized exchange of product data through ®les and via the sharing and archiving of product data in databases (e.g. relational, object-oriented and knowledge-based). Since the area of application of the STEP standard is extremely broad, it is issued in numerous sections, identi®ed as Parts. There are several types or classi®cations of Parts. The Parts known as APs de®ne the context, scope and information requirements of a designated application area and specify the portions of the total STEP standard, which satisfy those …