Concepts of Computer Graphics/Output Space/Vectors/STEP

STEP or Standardized Exchange of Product is a CAD/CAM standard used to write out information for interchange by many modeler program like CATIA, PTC's Pro/Engineer, SolidEdge, and SolidWorks.

  • 2D used in draft represent a vector layout
  • 3D Boundary representations (BREP), have 4 major types:
  1. * I) Wireframe
  1. * II) Simple
  1. * III) Facetted representation,
  1. * IV) Advanced boundary representation .

[http://wheger.tripod.com/step/csg.stp CSG Constructive Solid Geometry]


In addition to representing geometry and topology, the format allows for representing additional engineering processes (e.g. stage of the model and annotations). Furthermore, one can write a feature history and associate to the CSG representation, the BREP.