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The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) is a vendor-neutral
file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...
that allows the digital exchange of information among
computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...
(CAD) systems. It's an ASCII-based textual format. The official title of IGES is ''Digital Representation for Communication of Product Definition Data'', first published in March, 1980 by the U.S.
National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
as NBSIR 80-1978. Many documents (like early versions of the
Defense Standard A United States defense standard, often called a military standard, "MIL-STD", "MIL-SPEC", or (informally) "MilSpecs", is used to help achieve standardization objectives by the U.S. Department of Defense. Standardization is beneficial in achievi ...
s MIL-PRF-28000 and MIL-STD-1840) referred to it as
ASME The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing ...
Y14.26M, the designation of the
ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...
committee that approved IGES Version 1.0. Using IGES, a CAD user can exchange product data models in the form of
circuit diagram A circuit diagram (wiring diagram, electrical diagram, elementary diagram, electronic schematic) is a graphical representation of an electrical circuit. A pictorial circuit diagram uses simple images of components, while a schematic diagram s ...
s, wireframe,
freeform surface Freeform surface modelling is a technique for engineering freeform surfaces with a CAD or CAID system. The technology has encompassed two main fields. Either creating aesthetic surfaces (class A surfaces) that also perform a function; for examp ...
or
solid modeling Solid modeling (or solid modelling) is a consistent set of principles for mathematical and computer modeling of three-dimensional shapes '' (solids)''. Solid modeling is distinguished from related areas of geometric modeling and computer graphi ...
representations ''Representations'' is an interdisciplinary journal in the humanities published quarterly by the University of California Press. The journal was established in 1983 and is the founding publication of the New Historicism movement of the 1980s. It ...
. Applications supported by IGES include traditional
engineering drawing An engineering drawing is a type of technical drawing that is used to convey information about an object. A common use is to specify the geometry necessary for the construction of a component and is called a detail drawing. Usually, a number of ...
s, models for analysis, and other
manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
functions.


History

IGES was an initiative of the
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
(USAF)
Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) is a US Air Force program that develops tools, techniques, and processes to support manufacturing integration. It influenced the computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) and computer-aided manufacturi ...
(ICAM) project (1976-1984). ICAM sought to develop procedures (
IDEF IDEF, initially an abbreviation of ICAM Definition and renamed in 1999 as Integration Definition,IEEE Standard for Functional Modeling Language—Syntax and Semantics for IDEF0, Software Engineering Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Soci ...
) processes ( Group Technology) and software (
CAD/CAM CAD/CAM refers to the integration of Computer-aided design (CAD) and Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Both of these require powerful computers. ''CAD'' software helps designers and draftsmen; ''CAM'' "reduces manpower costs" in the manufactur ...
) that would integrate all operations in Aerospace manufacturing and thus greatly reduce costs. Earlier the USAF Manufacturing Technology Program had funded the Automatically Programmed Tools (APT) language for programming Numerically Controlled (NC) machine tools. To close the data gap between parts design and manufacturing, one of the ICAM goals was to develop CAD software that would automatically generate numerical control programs for the very complex Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machine tools used throughout the
Aerospace Aerospace is a term used to collectively refer to the atmosphere and outer space. Aerospace activity is very diverse, with a multitude of commercial, industrial and military applications. Aerospace engineering consists of aeronautics and astrona ...
industry. A serious issue was the incompatibility of data produced by the many
CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...
systems in use at the time. USAF/ICAM called a meeting at the
National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
(now known as
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
or
NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
) in 1978 to address this issue.
Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...
offered to sell its CAD translation software to USAF for one United States dollar.
USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...
accepted this offer and contracted NIST to bring together a group of users and vendors, including Boeing,
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
,
Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...
,
Computervision Computervision, Inc. (CV) was an early pioneer in Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/ CAM). Computervision was founded in 1969 by Marty Allen and Philippe Villers, and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. Its early ...
,
Applicon Applicon, Incorporated was one of the first manufacturers of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing ( CAD/CAM) systems. It was co-founded in 1969 in Bedford, Massachusetts by four founders working at the MIT Lincoln Lab: Fontaine Richardson who ...
and others to further develop and test this software. Though it was the practice to begin the name of ICAM developments with the word integrated (for example the IDEFs) believing that there would be rapid development of graphical exchange software, USAF decided that the IGES would be the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification not the Integrated Graphics Exchange Specification. Since 1988, the DoD has required that all digital
product and manufacturing information Product and manufacturing information, also abbreviated PMI, conveys non-geometric attributes in 3D computer-aided design (CAD) and Collaborative Product Development systems necessary for manufacturing product components and assemblies. PMI may i ...
(PMI) for weapons systems contracts (the engineering drawings, circuit diagrams, ''etc''.) be delivered in
electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...
form such as IGES format. As a consequence, CAx software vendors who want to market their products to DoD subcontractors and their partners needed to support the import (reading) and export (writing) of IGES format files. An ANSI standard since 1980, IGES has been used in the automotive,
aerospace Aerospace is a term used to collectively refer to the atmosphere and outer space. Aerospace activity is very diverse, with a multitude of commercial, industrial and military applications. Aerospace engineering consists of aeronautics and astrona ...
, and
shipbuilding Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to befor ...
industries. It has been used for weapons systems from
Trident missile The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV). Originally developed by Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation, the missile is armed with thermon ...
guidance system A guidance system is a virtual or physical device, or a group of devices implementing a controlling the movement of a ship, aircraft, missile, rocket, satellite, or any other moving object. Guidance is the process of calculating the changes in po ...
s to entire
aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...
s. These part models may have to be used years after the vendor of the original design system has gone out of business. IGES files provide a way to access this data decades from now. Today, plugin viewers for
Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
s allow IGES files created 20 years ago to be viewed from anywhere in the world. After the initial release of STEP (ISO 10303) in 1994, interest in further development of IGES declined, and Version 5.3 (1996) was the last published standard.


File format

An IGES file is composed of 80-character
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
records, a record length derived from the
punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
era. Text strings are represented in "
Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in ...
" format, the number of characters in the string, followed by the letter "H", followed by the text string, ''e.g.'', "4HSLOT" (this is the text string format used in early versions of the Fortran language). Early IGES translators had problems with IBM
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
s because the mainframes used
EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding six- ...
encoding for text, and some EBCDIC-ASCII translators would either substitute the wrong character, or improperly set the
parity bit A parity bit, or check bit, is a bit added to a string of binary code. Parity bits are a simple form of error detecting code. Parity bits are generally applied to the smallest units of a communication protocol, typically 8-bit octets (bytes) ...
, causing a misread. Here is a very small IGES file from 1987, containing only two POINT (Type 116), two CIRCULAR ARC (Type 100), and two LINE (Type 110) entities. It represents a slot, with the points at the centers of the two half-circles that form the ends of the slot, and the two lines that form the sides.
                                                                        S      1
1H,,1H;,4HSLOT,37H$1$DUA2: GESLIB.BDRAFT.B2ILOT.IGS;,                G      1
17HBravo3 BravoDRAFT,31HBravo3->IGES V3.002 (02-Oct-87),32,38,6,38,15,  G      2
4HSLOT,1.,1,4HINCH,8,0.08,13H871006.192927,1.E-06,6.,                   G      3
31HD. A. Harrod, Tel. 313/995-6333,24HAPPLICON - Ann Arbor, MI,4,0;     G      4
     116       1       0       1       0       0       0       0       1D      1
     116       1       5       1       0                               0D      2
     116       2       0       1       0       0       0       0       1D      3
     116       1       5       1       0                               0D      4
     100       3       0       1       0       0       0       0       1D      5
     100       1       2       1       0                               0D      6
     100       4       0       1       0       0       0       0       1D      7
     100       1       2       1       0                               0D      8
     110       5       0       1       0       0       0       0       1D      9
     110       1       3       1       0                               0D     10
     110       6       0       1       0       0       0       0       1D     11
     110       1       3       1       0                               0D     12
116,0.,0.,0.,0,0,0;                                                    1P      1
116,5.,0.,0.,0,0,0;                                                    3P      2
100,0.,0.,0.,0.,1.,0.,-1.,0,0;                                         5P      3
100,0.,5.,0.,5.,-1.,5.,1.,0,0;                                         7P      4
110,0.,-1.,0.,5.,-1.,0.,0,0;                                           9P      5
110,0.,1.,0.,5.,1.,0.,0,0;                                            11P      6
S      1G      4D     12P      6                                        T      1
The file is divided into 5 sections: Start, Global, Directory Entry, Parameter Data, and Terminate indicated by the characters S, G, D, P, or T in column 73. The characteristics and geometric information for an entity is split between two sections; one in a two record, fixed-length format (the Directory Entry, or DE Section), the other in a multiple record, comma delimited format (the Parameter Data, or PD Section), as can be seen in a more human-readable representation of the file. When displayed, the user should see two
yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In the R ...
points (hard to see on a
white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
background, but most CAD systems use a
black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
background), one located at the
origin Origin(s) or The Origin may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Comics and manga * Origin (comics), ''Origin'' (comics), a Wolverine comic book mini-series published by Marvel Comics in 2002 * The Origin (Buffy comic), ''The Origin'' (Bu ...
of model space
,0,0 The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
two
red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...
circular arcs, and two
green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...
lines.


Foreign-language support

Due to its growing international popularity (several countries, including Australia and the UK, adopted IGES as their own National Standards for PMI interoperability), support was added to the TEXT (Type 212) entity to support the ISO 8859 (Latin-1) alphabet for European characters. In the 1990s, IGES added support for the
JIS encoding In computing, JIS encoding refers to several Japanese Industrial Standards for encoding the Japanese language. Strictly speaking, the term means either: * A set of standard coded character sets for Japanese, notably: ** JIS X 0201, the Japanese ve ...
for
Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
( 漢字) as double-byte characters ( JIS-6226), allowing members of the
Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association , or JAMA, is a trade association with its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. It was founded in April 1967 and serves as a platform for the automakers of Japan to share technological developments and management practices. There are currently 14 memb ...
(JAMA) to exchange part models with their American and European partners without loss of the Kanji text. The current version of IGES does not support
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
16- or 32-bit character encoding, so Arabic and other scripts (like Thai) cannot be represented.


A recursive standard

One of the unique features of the IGES standard is that it was the first
ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...
standard to be documented using itself. Since Version 4.0, all of the technical illustrations for the printed version of the standard have been generated from IGES files. The
electronic publishing Electronic publishing (also referred to as publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, Online magazine, digital magazines, and the development of digital library, digital libraries and catalo ...
system (
LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
) integrates
raster images upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...
generated from IGES files into the
PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
sent to the
laser printer Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to d ...
, so text and images are printed on the same page for subsequent use as
camera-ready Camera-ready is a common term used in the commercial printing industry meaning that a document is, from a technical standpoint, ready to "go to press", or be printed. History The term camera-ready was first used in the photo offset printing ...
copy for commercial publication. Beginning with IGES Version 5.2, this is how the standard was generated, and Version 5.3 (the most recent ANSI-approved version) is available as a
PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
document. Many of the illustrations (all of which conform to the Defense Department's MIL-D-28000 Engineering Drawings Subset of IGES) use the entities that they describe, e.g., the illustration of the LEADER (ARROW) ENTITY (Type 214) can be used as a test case for translator implementers, because it contains all 12 arrow head styles defined by the standard. These
WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...
example files can be distinguished by a leading "F" and trailing "X" in the file name (like f214x.igs), and this library is called the IGES X-files by members of the IGES
community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
. Here is one of the example figures, Figure 2 from Appendix A (fmeparte.igs), that has appeared in every version of IGES since Version 3.0. It uses linear, angular, and ordinate dimension entities, as well as examples of both circular and conic arcs. It is usually the first part used when testing an IGES translator, because the standard has a picture of what it should look like.


See also

*
ISO 10303-21 STEP-File is a widely used data exchange form of STEP. ISO 10303 can represent 3D objects in Computer-aided design (CAD) and related information. Due to its ASCII structure, a STEP-file is easy to read, with typically one instance per line. Th ...


References

;Notes * * 1982 https://books.google.com/books/about/Digital_representation_for_communication.html?id=5LDgAAAAMAAJ * 1990 https://books.google.com/books/about/Digital_representation_for_communication.html?id=tyFZAAAAYAAJ * * *. Baseline version was January 12, 1999. *. Baseline version was January 5, 1998.


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Iges CAD file formats Computer file formats Computer-aided design software Graphics file formats