17 April 2024

Standards are the foundation for successful collaboration within and across companies, but collaboration between standards is just as important to cover the entire digital thread. To achieve that several project groups met jointly in Darmstadt from 11-14 March.

The LOTAR project used the face-to-face meetings to make progress on several new and updated documents of the EN/NAS 9300 series of standard which will be submitted to the industry associations ASD and AIA for publication later this year. The LOTAR MBSE team used the opportunity for direct interaction with prostep ivip’s Digital Data Package (DDP) project, since an MBSE archive package and a DDP follow similar concepts.

The CAx Interoperability Forum (CAx-IF) concluded its 53rd round of testing, which for the first time included broader testing of Persistent IDs. Such identifiers enable the tracking of changes in the model in use cases such as downstream communication as well as design collaboration.

The highlight of the week was a joint workshop of all project groups working on STEP AP242 XML. In addition to LOTAR, CAx, PDM, and EWIS (Electrical), this also included the JT projects. In total, 50 users and implementors from Japan, Europe, and the US discussed common scenarios for using STEP AP42 XML in combination with JT and STEP geometry to enable capabilities such as Kinematics, Assembly-level PMI, and Electrical Harness Installation. Previous roadblocks were resolved, and numerous pilot activities across the different project groups will follow later this year.

All in all, the four-day meeting with up to five parallel sessions and more than 40 attendees on site, plus just as many joining remotely, was a great success and rendered many results that will drive project work for the next six months. The LOTAR and CAx-IF teams will meet again 16-20 September in Phoenix, AZ, USA.