The automotive industry as a key user group for CAD systems, recognising product data representation and exchange as a matter of high strategic importance for the future, has made tremendous efforts to create an international standard for automotive design data, the STEP AP214.

Under the motto “creating quality instead of checking quality”, the ProSTEP Association is pursuing a concept of performing quality assurance for STEP implementations in parallel with their development phase. The ProSTEP Benchmark provides CAD system vendors with an opportunity to measure the quality of their STEP processors against the requirements of the user as they relate to day–to–day usage.

The fifth Benchmark was conducted in order to provide an update to the members of the ProSTEP Association. It was performed using the STEP translators that were available at the beginning of June 1999.

This Benchmark documents the capabilities in exchange of geometry, assembly and presentation data. Special attention was paid to the points left open by the previously conducted fourth Benchmark. These were the naming of assembly parts and the exchange of colours for couloured sub–elements. In addition the exchange of hybrid models was tested and requirements for handling the processors were also examined more closely.

At this point we would like to thank all the participating system vendors whose kind donations of hardware and software made the Benchmark possible. All the same we appreciate the effort of vendors and users providing the appropriate test cases.