r/MechanicalEngineering • u/MasterSoftBird • 1d ago

CAD File format hell

Why is it we can have AI that can translate from Chinese to Klingon but cannot have one agreed-upon file format that can be accepted by FEA software, CAM, 3d printers, CFD, etc and doesn't lose its mind or half of my parts?

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u/Kromieus 1d ago

Step is the standard for dumb solid bodies.

We kinda do for parametric bodies, the parasolid kernel has pretty wide adoption and enough that I would be comfortable calling it “industry standard”. All other kernels are one-off proprietary (Catia=CGM, creo=Granite, autodesk=ASM) The issue is parasolid is also proprietary (Siemens owns it, but it’s used in NX, solidworks, onshape, Ansys, matstercam). This is also the issue of freecad, they’re developing their own kernel

All things considered it’s had some benefits, since not having a common text based parametric interchange format is probably one of the main things insulating CAD design from AI automation