27 March 2025

A colorful mix of topics and participants with many results – this is how the joint meeting of the LOTAR project for long-term archiving in aviation with the MBx Interoperability Forum (MBx-IF) from March 10-13 can be briefly described.

Significant progress can be reported on the topic of long-term archiving. In 2025, the team will hand over seven standards from the EN9300 family (LOTAR) to the industry associations ASD and AIA for publication. Some of these are revisions of previously published documents, but there are also new standards, particularly in the areas of PLM and MBSE. At the same time, the individual working groups are working on implementing the requirements described in the LOTAR documents in pilot projects with individual software providers. This will ensure the feasibility of the requirements and the robustness of the standards selected as target formats (e.g., STEP AP242).

At the MBx-IF, which brings together users and software providers of STEP-AP242 interfaces on the topics of CAx, PDM, and electrical engineering, representatives from Honda and Toyota participated for the first time as part of a delegation from the Japanese automotive industry, contributing their own use cases and requirements, which complement the current work program well. This collaboration will be further strengthened in the future. In terms of content, the individual groups within the MBx-IF are currently working primarily on implementing new capabilities that will be included in the standard with the upcoming release of the 4th edition of STEP AP242. Material data, connection technology, and references to individual elements in other files are just some of the current topics. In the CAx domain, the 55th test round was completed in Hamburg, during which over a hundred files on eight different test cases were exchanged and many technical topics were further developed.

The next on-site meeting of the project groups will take place from September 16 to 19 in Seattle, Washington.