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Jeff Rowe
Jeff Rowe
Jeffrey Rowe has over 40 years of experience in all aspects of industrial design, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. On the publishing side, he has written over 1,000 articles for CAD, CAM, CAE, and other technical publications, as well as consulting in many capacities in the design … More »

Collaboration & Interoperability Congress 2012: Where’s JT?

 
May 21st, 2012 by Jeff Rowe

This week we are attending the Collaboration & Interoperability Congress (CIC) 2012. CIC is a unique independent vendor/technology/product-neutral event that addresses collaboration and interoperability in manufacturing and business processes. The event seems particularly well attended this year and represents by a wide range of industries and standards bodies.

One notable absence, however, was any representation from the JT camp — Siemens PLM Software. I would have thought that JT would take advantage of an event such as CIC to showcase and grandstand the data format. With no real presence, what are we to think? Is JT really as ubiquitous and pervasive as we have been led to believe? Maybe yes, maybe no. Admittedly, JT has its own conference this coming fall, but when just about every other interoperability technology provider shows up, why not JT? On the other hand, an organization that had a major presence was the relatively new 3DPDF Consortium.

CIC is an interesting conference because collaboration and interoperability are undergoing huge changes, due in large part to clould-based computing, storage, and software as service. Will the cloud be used exclusively tomorrow? Probably not, but over time it will be increasingly used as a primary digital data creation and management platform. In any case, interoperability in the cloud will become a bigger and bigger issue with great challenges, but also great opportunities.

An interesting session on the first day of the Congress discussed the following lightweight 3D formats:

  • STEP
  • 3DXML
  • 3D PDF
  • JT

Free viewers are largely what differentiate the above formats, but it was made clear that there is no such thing as a free viewer due to implementation and IP protection/security costs.

The 3D PDF format really got a lot of attention, at least during the first day of the Congress. It seems the reasons for this are the industrial strength tools available for 3D PDF, excellent user acceptance, and the fact that PDF is a widely recognized ISO standard (ISO 32000).

In the coming weeks, we’ll detail the advantages and disadvantages of each of the lightweight formats because they definitely have each.

As its central theme, CIC drives home the point that like living creatures and technologies, when it comes to evolution, it’s not necessarily the strongest or brightest that survive, it’s those who are the most adaptable. I think this will prove true and apply to collaboration and interoperability going forward.

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3 Responses to “Collaboration & Interoperability Congress 2012: Where’s JT?”

  1. Avatar Stan Przybylinski says:

    Do they have a session with an update on the ISO status of JT?

    Stan Przybylinski
    Director of Research
    CIMdata, Inc.

  2. Avatar David Prawel says:

    I tried to get Siemens/JT to come and represent themselves. Not. I don’t think they like to spend anything on marketing at events where they can’t completely control the message.

    I heard yesterdaty at CIC that JT was just rejected by ISO. Have yet to confirm.

  3. Jennifer Herron Jennifer Herron says:

    David Prawel’s market research has clearly shown that STEP is the favorite neutral file format as well as the most institutionalized.

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