Sif: a Solid Interchange Format for Web-based Prototyping

Under NSF sponsorship, we are developing a Solid Interchange Format (SIF) with which descriptions of desired parts can be transmitted efficiently and unambiguously from a designer to competing fabricators. SIF is a terse, human readable ASCII format providing a processand resolution-independent description of the desired shape. It also explicitly captures some aspects of the part topology and of the original design intent, as well as information on precision and tolerancing. SIF is designed to carry enough information so that back and forth interactions between designers and fabricators can be reduced to a single one-way part submission after the designer runs standardized test programs to assure the consistency of the SIF representation and the manufacturability of the part with the selected fabrication process.