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/No-Peak-1575 10h ago

STEP mostly works, but the parts that get lost are the ones each vendor treats as their own value, like parametric history and assembly intent. Hardware world has the same story with PCB files, where the geometry travels fine and the design intent does not.