CAD data exchange

CAD data exchange involves a number of software technologies and methods to translate data from one Computer-aided design system to another CAD file format. This PLM technology is required to facilitate collaborative work (CPD) between OEMs and their suppliers.

The main topic is with the translation of geometry (wireframe, surface and solid) but also of importance is other data such as attributes; metadata, assembly structure and feature data.

Methods of translation

There are basically three methods of transferring data from one CAD system to another.

Direct internal

Some CAD systems can directly read and/or write other CAD formats, simply by using file open and file save as options. As most CAD file formats are not open, this option is limited to either systems owned by the same company or via hacking of competitor's file format.

Direct external

There are a number of companies that specialize in CAD data translation software, providing software that can read one system and write the information in another CAD system format. These systems have their own proprietary intermediate format some of which will allow reviewing the data during translation. Some of these translators work stand-alone while others require one or both of the CAD packages installed on the translation machine as they use code (APIs) from these systems to read/write the data.

Data exchange

Data exchange is the process of taking data structured under a source schema and actually transforming it into data structured under a target schema, so that the target data is an accurate representation of the source data. Data exchange is similar to the related concept of data integration except that data is actually restructured (with possible loss of content) in data exchange. There may be no way to transform an instance given all of the constraints. Conversely, there may be numerous ways to transform the instance (possibly infinitely many), in which case a "best" choice of solutions has to be identified and justified.

Single-domain data exchange

Often there are a few dozen different source and target schema (proprietary data formats) in some specific domain. Often people develop a exchange format or interchange format for some single domain, and then write a few dozen different routines to (indirectly) translate each and every source schema to each and every target schema by using the interchange format as an intermediate step. That requires a lot less work than writing and debugging the hundreds of different routines that would be required to directly translate each and every source schema directly to each and every target schema. (For example, Standard Interchange Format for geospatial data, Data Interchange Format for spreadsheet data, GPS eXchange Format or Keyhole Markup Language for indicating GPS coordinates on the globe, Quicken Interchange Format for financial data, GDSII for integrated circuit layout, etc.)