Implementing ISO standard 10303 application protocol 224 for automated process planning

Gashed application landscape and heterogenic systems are still preventing efficient and automated product development. Process planning especially is an important step that determines most of the costs in production or the success of obtaining a potential order. As the step between design and production, process planning is important for manufacturing a product in an economic manner. This paper provides a discussion about necessary requirements for automated process planning and an efficient product development. Additionally we present our intended idea to innovate the product design under the focus of automated process planning. Therefore we present some aspects relating to feature based design, standardized product data representation with ISO 10303 and neutral data exchange with STEP (Standard for The Exchange of Product model data). Relating to this, we are focusing the application protocol (AP) 224 and, because of missing implementations, we reveal our approaches for the implementation of this protocol. This includes the generation of a feature library with the GeneSEZ generator framework that applies the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) framework developed at the University of Applied Sciences, Zwickau. Another point is the description of an ACIS based library that realizes the visualization of the related geometry. Finally, our implemented EXPRESS interpreter is introduced, which generates necessary files for data exchange with STEP-files. This Design Module (DM) is described in detail.