We will be at SIGGRAPH 99 in the Los Angeles Convention Center from August 10 - 12 in booth 2361. We'll be demonstrating both the IGES Data Translation and Fillets & Blends capabilities (see the next two articles). Hope to see you there. We will also be exhibiting at the A/E/S Mtech Show in Chicago's McCormick Place from November 9 - 11.

We are beginning the development of VDAFS and STEP translation capabilities, so we are very much interested in the priorities of our customers, first and foremost, but we also value the input of those who are not currently using SMLib. Let us know what you think.

Here are a few details to get you thinking. VDAFS is an older German standard for transmitting CAD geometry data. Its design is similar to IGES, but it is vastly simpler -- for instance, its specification is one-twentieth the length of IGES's. Because of its simplicity, our prior experience with it, and the fact it can heavily reuse our IGES code, we expect to have a translator ready fairly quickly. We are aiming for a pre-release in August. We have also dipped our toes in the water of STEP. STEP is an ISO file format whih can transmit geometry and topology information. It was designed to replace both VDAFS and IGES, though its acceptance varies substantially.

A lot more details are available in the March Newsletter and at the HarmonyWare website.

We will have an initial capability of fillets and blends in the upcoming release of SMLib. Later in the fall, we will have a much more substantive release with increased capabilities and performance. To get an idea of current capabilities and where we're heading, take a look at the Fillets and Blends Gallery. This Gallery provides a number of very interesting examples of how much progress we've made on fillets and blends. There is also a press release on the Fillets and Blends capabilities which provides a few more details.

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