IGES Workshop/Tools
These lists have been divided into three categories:
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Configuration Management ||
Public Domain ||
Commercial Tools |
An approved Edit Change Order must be in the LaTeX authoring markup language prior to receipt by the IGES Editor. Both IGES and the ECO forms utilize the LaTeX. This markup language is described in many resources, and a good place to start is the
TeX Users Group (TUG) along with many other helpful resources supporting both TeX and the macro-extended LaTeX. The IGES Project distributes the following helpful files to make your RFC task easier:
- An "RFC skeleton" file as distributed by the IGES Editor is available (for use in any text editor) to author your RFC.
- A list of IGES Macros defined and maintained in the "Style File" below. (Some, as noted, are called from the "RFC skeleton" when that file is used to author your RFC.)
- An IGES "Style file" as distributed by the IGES Editor is available for processing your RFC in a LaTeX environment. (On downloading the 24K text file, name it IGES.STY. Two additional files may be required: titlepage.sty is part of the LaTeX distribution. The "ige10STY.txt" 8K text file may also be downloaded; save in your LaTeX application directory as ige10.sty.
- If you are familiar with the process, a "README" file may be sufficient to edit the skeleton file and submit your RFC.
The process for proposing changes is detailed in "Operating Procedures and Life Cycle Documentation for the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification," NISTIR 5666, available from the IGES/PDES Program Office at NIST.
The IGES Standard mentions several tools which are "available from the NIST IPO Office." This collection began with existing code found by IGES Project members. Additions to this collection are encouraged (Note that source code supplied should be commented, and the IGES Project may wish to circulate the code for implementor testing prior to publishing and posting; neither the IGES Project or NIST provide any support or assurances for these files):
- New A free "Figure Viewer" in Java is available. This Viewer was developed primarily as a tool for use with Internet-delivered sketches, simple 2-dimensional drawings, or technical illustrations. The code may be also be included on other media such as Compact Disks. The Figure Viewer proposal was approved by the IGES Implementors Committee in 1995, and the code developed by InterData Access (IDA, now Trac Tech) under the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SBIR Subtopic 97-8.7.1-T. Two distributions are available. A binary executable set (136k Zip archive) has been tested under JDK 1.3 and 1.4. The source files (183K Zip archive) are available as may be needed to create applications or applets subject to the non-commercial and acknowledgments clauses in the code comments and included Readme file.
- A free IGES-opener application IGESGUMP is available from the WiZ WORX "IGESGUMP Press Release" page. (See also WiZ WORX in the commercial listings below.)
- A free IGES viewer, beta version, has been contributed by Andrew Cunningham for the display of NURB lines AND surfaces. More entities may be included in future versions. The Viewer runs on a PowerPC Macintosh with the Quickdraw3D system extension installed. The 162K self-extracting BinHex file of the IGESView application is available by FTP. The viewer will function as a Web helper application (see first item in this section).
(new; 3/15/96. QD3D added 3/19/96.)
- A utility to convert IGES "regular" ASCII to "Compressed ASCII" IGES format and back may be achieved by compiling the FORTRAN 77 source (a 19K text file) code. Please note that the code was originally written for the VAX 4.2 compiler, and that there is a known error which occurs when a "D" character is in column 1 of the compressed ASCII input file. (A re-write of this program --perhaps in C-- would be most welcome!)
- The B-Spline PASCAL source (a 220K text file) code converts between the Rational and the Parametric forms. The paper "Conversion Between Rational B-Spline and Parametric Spline Representations" (in PDF, 64K) by Richard Fuhr, January 7, 1985 describes the conversion and the algorithms. Thanks to US Pro for re-typsetting the paper (July, 1998) for Web access.
- There is an IGES MACRO expansion program which we will post here (however, the last known source of the program was a half-inch mag tape--).
- An IGES 3D Piping Application Protocol (size=111K Zip file) utility by Robert Schuler is available. The non-graphical tool runs under DOS. For further details, see his FFF-README text.
Almost every CAD and ECAD application has (or has available) a set of IGES translators. These applications are your first-line resource for transfers using IGES. The IGES Project Implementors Committee actively coordinated translator development to achieve a high-fidelity transfer of your product definitions.
Originated 12/11/1995, last update 12/12/2007.
Your comments would be most welcome! Send updates to chparks@mdo.net.
Send inquiries on obtaining IGES and related documents to uspro@scra.org US Product Data Association. 