How do you manage STEP files in your manufacturing process?

[gobradovic]

Dear all

My company want to create and share STEP files with our manufacturers.

We are officially providing 2D drawings to our manufacturers. Our manufacturing suppliers then either revert back to creating machine code manually OR ask someone at our design department to provide them the 3D model OR suppliers are creating the 3D files themselves, based on the drawings, and include this additional time in our bill.

We want to create/publish STEP files as a result from the Release Procedure together with the 2D drawings.

I have some questions to the forum:

1. What STEP standard do you use? Is the AP203_is that Creo produces OOTB enough?

2. Is there a way to incorporate the attributes from the Creo origin file to the STEP file?

3. How do you secure the intellectual property (IP) of the file? If the files has gone astray it should stay clear that the file belongs to us.

4. How do you share the files with your suppliers in a secure way? Do you use ProjectLink or any other technical solution?

If anyone is willing to share this information in a more official way, let me know and I will book a meeting.

Thank you

Goran Obradovic

Tetra Pak Packaging Solutions

Sweden

[MikeLockwood]

HI Goran,

Might be good to plan on addressing incrementally.

First, CAD users can create STEP files manually and attach to the CAD model as secondary content.  Doing this allow development of some simple standards and gets all users used to accessing the STEP files from this location (CAD Doc Contents tab).

Second, can set up visualization publishing to include creation of STEP (to the same standads) and/or include this as part of for example, a promotion request workflow process.  The downside of this is that users should be able to access and verify the STEP files ahead of the state change if needed.  After there is good confidence in the settings, automation can be helpful.

Can't comment on including attributes or IP at this time.

Can share these files w/Suppliers various ways.  If sharing the CAD Doc to a Project for example, difficult to provide access to the secondary content w/o access to the Primary content so if this is a concern, may need a more complex soltion.  May consider using Packages, with part of the workflow being to add the STEP files to the Package.

[gobradovic]

Hi Mike

Thanks for reply.

We are going to create them as a part of the release procedure and store them in a homegrown "visualisation portal". We would like to avoid having our manufacturing suppliers in our "cookie jar".

I will bring the comment on Project and Primary and secondary content issue with me to the analysis.

Any comment on the STEP standard? Which are you using? Suppliers happy with the quality of the STEP standard you use

[gobradovic]

Hi Mike

Thanks for reply.

We are going to create them as a part of the release procedure and store them in a homegrown "visualisation portal". We would like to avoid having our manufacturing suppliers in our "cookie jar".

I will bring the comment on Project and Primary and secondary content issue with me to the analysis.

Any comment on the STEP standard? Which are you using? Suppliers happy with the quality of the STEP standard you use?