Manipulating Geometry Instances in an STEP-based OODB from Commercial CAD Systems

It is difficult to access and share design data among heterogeneous CAD systems. Usually, different CAD systems exchange the design data using a neutral format such as IGES or STEP. A prototype CAD system which uses a geometric kernel and a commercial database management system has been implemented. The prototype system used the Open Cascade geometric kernel and the commercial object-oriented database ObjectStore. STEP provides the database schema. The database can be accessed from commercial CAD systems such as SolidWorks or Unigraphics. The data access module from a commercial CAD system is developed with the CAD system's native API, ObjectStore API functions, and ActiveX.