Overview
Accurate and efficient feature data exchange between computer-aided design (CAD) systems is critical in collaborative engineering environments. This research applies concepts of computer science to an engineering problem; specifically, it explores the advantages of a programming language approach to the exchange of feature information between commercial CAD systems. In our approach, feature-based representations of CAD models correspond to programs or abstract syntax trees (ASTs) in the language modeling the CAD systems. In order to demonstrate the approach in a real application, a software tool was created to convert some 2D features from a Pro/Engineer part file to a SolidWorks part file through intermediary open XML representations. The tool supports conversion of models containing 2D features such as arcs, constraints, and angle dimensions.