A system for creating and manipulating mechanical part models based on PDES

The Automated Manufacturing Research Facility of the National Institute of Standards and Technology is moving towards the use of PDES-based definitions for mechanical parts. (PDEs is the emerging product data exchange specification standard). This effort is in conjunction with NIST´s designation as the National PDES testbed. Currently, commercial CAD systems do not directly support the use of PDES-based models and are generally not capable of representing much of the information specified by PDES in an integrated fashion. The author is implementing a system to address these limitations of CAD systems, demonstrating the functionality required for PDES-based part modeling. The design issues, architecture, and functionality of the system are presented