The PDM User Group is a forum for companies, which use PDM systems and exchange PDM data. In 2005 the main focus of the group was the CATIA V5 data exchange, because the switch from CATIA V4 to V5 has caused basic data exchange problems.

The results of the PDM user group’s work in 2005 is this “best practice”. It describes the problems, analyses the causes of the problems and defines a STEP AP 214 mapping for CATIA V5 related PDM data.

This document is addressed to all PDM related engineers and computer scientists, like PDM architects and PDM implementers.

Taking a shallow look at the increasing CATIA V5 functionality, some people may think, that they don’t need STEP AP 214 based data exchange any more, because CATIA V5 stores the assembly structure, part IDs, customer attributes and many other properties.

This simple approach doesn’t consider, that CATIA V5 is not used stand alone, but within PDMIntegrations. The main problem is the usage of inter-document links in CATIA V5. The CATIA V5 links can build a network-like document structure. The PDM systems handle these links differently and there are company-specific construction guidelines, which define restrictions to the link usage.

Therefore the goal of this “Best Practice” is to find a CATA V5 - STEP AP 214 mapping to Enable STEP based CATIA V5 data exchange with

1. No impacts from partner specific CATIA V5 methodology
2. No limitation of used CATIA V5 functionality
3. All used PDM Systems (with CATIA V5 integration)

In other words: Each data exchange partner should be able to exchange his CAD and meta data with each other with only one STEP processor.