CAD Data Processing
Open CASCADE Technology-based applications help you gain maximum productivity.
Open CASCADE Technology-based applications help you gain maximum productivity by encapsulating functions which are specific to your activity (specific models, specific wording, specific user interface etc.). Most often these applications must be integrated on a site with an existing chain of external applications, making data conversion to and from these applications necessary. If so take a look at all the powerful functionality that Open CASCADE Technology gives you to do that.
Translation
Open CASCADE Technology provides services for your applications to read and write data of other software applications using the following interfaces:
- STEP
- IGES
- ACIS
- Parasolid
- DXF
Solutions for CAD data exchange with other formats can be also provided.
For more information please refer to additional components.
The IGES translator of Open CASCADE Technology can read and write IGES files conforming to the IGES standard up to version 5.3. The STEP translator reads and writes data conforming to STEP AP203 and AP214 (both CD and DIS versions) standards. The translators themselves as they are published in Open CASCADE Technology provide all the necessary classes and tools to map IGES and STEP entities into Open CASCADE Technology shapes:
- Classes representing IGES and STEP entities and whole models with relationships between entities
- Conversion from IGES and STEP entities to Open CASCADE Technology shapes and vice-versa
- Convenient API to perform the translation
These tools provide excellent results on perfect IGES and STEP files that fully conform to IGES (or STEP) rules. If models to be transferred have some defects or imperfections, then a powerful healing mechanism available in Open CASCADE Technology is applied.
Modification
Open CASCADE Technology allows you to modify the imported shape in order to improve it and make it easily usable in Open CASCADE Technology. The main functionalities are:
Sewing
Sewing is an algorithm that allows creation of connected topology (shells and wires) from a set of separate topological elements (faces and edges). For example after reading from an IGES file, a compound of separate faces is obtained. Sewing can be used to create the shell from these faces.
Shape Healing
Often IGES and STEP files encountered in real practice have some inconsistencies that lead to invalidity of shape resulting from translation. The Shape Healing toolkit is intended to deal with such cases and validate the shapes for use in Open CASCADE Technology. The Shape Healing is embedded into all available translators and is applied whenever required.
Shape Processing
Shape Processing is mechanism that allows to perform a set of operations on a shape that has to be written to a neutral format or which has been read from it. You can define the sequence of operators to be applied and their parameters with the help of resource file. Since Shape Processing can lead to modifications and replacements of (sub) shapes of the original shape by new ones, an even to removal and splitting of some (sub) shapes, the full mapping information is gathered during the process.
