What Industrial Marketers Need To Know About STEP files

STandard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP) is the most common neutral CAD file type. A neutral CAD format enables CAD geometry to be transferred between different CAD systems. Think of STEP as a CSV file compared to an Excel file, an SVG compared to an AI file, or a TXT compared to a DOCX file.

For instance, if an engineer designs a motor in the SOLIDWORKS CAD system, but their colleague that needs the file uses the Siemens NX CAD system, the engineer cannot accurately transfer that file to their colleague as a native SOLIDWORKS CAD file. Instead, they would typically export the motor as a STEP file. Neither the SOLIDWORKS nor the Siemens NX CAD system can accurately read each other’s native file formats, so the engineer and the colleague must export and read the files in STEP format.

STEP files enable engineers to pass geometry between suppliers, contractors, and customers even if they all use different CAD systems. Without neutral file types like STEP, a CAD model would have to be recreated in multiple CAD systems in order to use it in various applications.

The benefits of offering STEP files of your products

There are a few key benefits to offering STEP files:

1. Many engineers are familiar with STEP files
2. There’s a lower cost of implementation with existing STEP files

Many engineers are familiar with STEP files

STEP is the de-facto format for most manufacturers that offer CAD models of their products online. It’s a known file type among engineers because nearly all CAD systems enable STEP import and export. When engineers need a file format they can use, STEP is always there.

If you want to offer CAD to engineers, it’s a good idea to offer STEP files, or miss out on a portion of the market.

There’s a lower cost of implementation with existing STEP files

Suppose your company has already created CAD models for most of your products. In that case, it’s typically more cost-effective to offer STEP files on your website than to recreate the library from scratch in multiple native formats or implement a product configurator.

The drawbacks of STEP files

Even though STEP files are versatile and many engineers want them, they have some drawbacks and limitations worth considering.

STEP files can:

1. Be expensive to create by the engineering team
2. Contain your manufacturing IP
3. Break when imported
4. Have bulky file sizes due to unnecessary detail 
5. Lack engineering and purchasing data like the part number and manufacturer information
6. Be cumbersome to update in bulk manually 

STEP Files can be expensive to create

Designers create product models in a CAD system individually and export them as STEP files. That means every variation of a product must be created separately. If there are only a few variations, no biggie. If, on the other hand, there are many variations, the costs of having high-paid engineers create hundreds, or thousands, of files can add up quickly.

In the case of many variations, or if your company doesn’t have STEP content, it’s more cost-effective to utilize a product configurator.

STEP files contain engineering IP

Your customers want CAD data, but so do your competitors, and foreign actors with malicious intent.

Engineers create exact product models in their CAD system and export a STEP file. Unless the engineer strips all intellectual property (IP) from the model before exporting it, the IP will be available to anyone with access to the STEP file. If you offer regular STEP files on your website, losing your intellectual property is as simple as a bot scanning your website and scrapping all your CAD data in one go.

To prevent this, you either:

• Need your engineering team to take extra time to strip out any IP from the models

Or:

• Offer form, fit, and function sales models instead. Form, fit, and function models are specifically designed to act as a “sales” model, or a usable placeholder that doesn’t contain IP.

STEP files can break when imported

Every CAD system processes data in different ways and no two CAD systems will treat a STEP file the same. Sometimes files can “break,” causing errors or other usability problems. There is no way to know if your STEP files work correctly unless you import every STEP file into every CAD system your customers use.

STEP files often have bulky files sizes

Engineering teams have detailed geometry in their manufacturing components. They typically put this information within the STEP files that their manufacturing companies offer on their website. This risks IP and creates bloated file sizes.

When an engineer downloads a STEP file, that file is typically only a small part of a larger assembly. If the file sizes for each item in the engineer’s assembly are bulky, it slows their system and workflow down.

It’s best to offer lightweight files by stripping out IP and manufacturing information.

STEP files lack engineering and purchasing data

To create a STEP file, an engineer exports it from their CAD system. The file is converted from its original native format into a STEP file. The customer then imports the file into their CAD system and converts it into the new CAD systems format. This process causes a lot of data loss and decreases the model’s functionality.

For example, STEP files are not mated and constrained, which means moving parts are either completely separate or come in as one solid model. Where the native CAD file of a moveable product includes motion data for testing and simulations, a STEP file has to be reworked for the motion within to function correctly.

Other metadata is also stripped from STEP files. This includes data like:

• RPMs
• Wattage
• Voltage
• Motion
• Material
• Beams and reaches

This lack of data makes the model less valuable to the end user.

More importantly, purchasing data is also stripped from STEP files. The manufacturer’s name, the part number, and other purchasing data will not be imported into the customer’s CAD system.

When an engineer sends the bill of materials to their purchasing department, the procurement team won’t know where the part came from or how to purchase the part unless the engineer added that information manually to the model after importing it (hint: not going to happen). If you’re the manufacturer of the downloaded part, this means fewer sales for you.

STEP files are cumbersome to update in bulk

If you need to update one or two STEP files, it’s no big deal. Even updating 10-20 STEP files isn’t the end of the world. But what if you need to update 100 STEP files or more? That’s a major project. Products with frequent updates take a lot of engineering resources to maintain.

How can industrial marketers offer CAD models while mitigating some of the issues with providing STEP files?

There are two main ways to mitigate some or all of the issues inherent in standard STEP files. You can have your STEP files imported into a system that generates models instantly, or have a native catalog created for your parts.