Product Model for Gear Units
During the last years it has become more and more common practice in the gear industry to exchange gear data electronically between the different parties. Up to now the format of the gear data is usually DXF, IGES or a company-specific format. A common format, which includes not only geometry data, but also load capacity and other gear-related data, was not available. Therefore a product model for gear units was developed at the FZG (Forschungsstelle fuer Zahnraeder und Getriebebau). The main goal was the realization of the data exchange between gear calculation programs, CAD-systems and a central storage of all gear data. This product model covers all kinds of gear data like gear geometry, load capacity data, lubricant data, manufacturing data, etc.. The product model for gear units is based on the application protocol AP 214 of ISO 10303 STEP. This application protocol was originally created to describe the design process of the automotive industry and does not have a sufficient definition of gear data. An extension of an existing application protocol causes time consumptive normative procedures. Therefore the structure of the product model for gear units is independent from ISO 1030-214. It consists of a mechanism, which defines a data structure acc. to ISO 10303-214, but adapted to the product model for gear units. The product model gives a description how to use ISO 10303-214 for the application of gear units. Meanwhile this product model for gear units is published as a VDMA-paper and therefore open to the public. The first successful application is the data exchange between gearcalculation programs of the FVA and CAD-systems. By this new format the data exchange of gear data is now extremely simplified.