STEP: Trouble Shooting

Import

If you need to recover from transfer failures after importing the data contained in a STEP file into a CATPart document, please refer to the IGES: Trouble Shooting chapter because the repairing scenario is the same with IGES files.
There are however some specificities for STEP data, they are detailed just below:

What you need to know

STEP files may describe assemblies that contain CATParts. The result of the conversion is a Product which contains several components.

 

=> If needed, each part can be analyzed and corrected individually.

If the components have links between them (for example instantiations), the links are recreated in the product.

 

=> Corrections on the source part are automatically reported to instances.
You are now ready to create the topology. For more information:

 

STEP files with syntax errors

When a STEP file is syntactically invalid, there are error messages in the .err file describing those invalidities.
Syntax errors are responsible for partial loss of STEP file data: all invalid entities and all entities pointing directly or not to invalid entities are ignored. In order to recover all the STEP entities, correct the STEP file before reading it in V5.

 

STEP files with short names

Using short names in STEP files is an out-of-date way to reduce the size of STEP files (available in V4). Therefore V5 imports only STEP files with long names and does not support short names. Please ask your suppliers to send you only STEP files with long names.

 

STEP Import from VPM

VPM sometimes exports assemblies positioned by scaling or mirroring to STEP, by using the STEP entity CARTESIAN_TRANSFORMATION_OPERATOR. This is not valid regarding the STEP standard and not managed by V5 STEP Interface. An error is detected and appears in the err file and the positioning is not correctly interpreted.

Export

Exporting V4 data

Exporting V4 data does not provide the expected result: data placed in the NoShow in V5, or changes of colors or graphic attributes are not taken into account, e.g. if you have sent a V4 element to the NoShow, it will be kept since it is its V4 status that is taken into account. To make those changes effective, you need to make those changes in a V4 session, save the data in V4 and re-import them to V5.

 

Export from DMU

DMU allows scaling and mirroring while positioning assembly components. Such a position of instance of component cannot be exported to STEP (the position should be a translation and/or a rotation). This issue is detected when you export the assembly to STEP. Check the err file. If you find an error message like the one below, the export is wrong, one instance is not correctly positioned.

<E> The instance '00200-411-21' of the product '00200-411-37' was incorrectly positioned by Mirroring
<E> The instance '00200-411-21' of the product '00200-411-37' was incorrectly positioned by Scaling

By-pass : Remove the components positioned by mirroring or scaling and replace them by standards products created in V5 before exporting.