Abstract
Interoperability has been the problem of CAD/CAM systems. Starting from 1980's, national and international organizations have addressed the issue through development and release of standards for the exchange of geometric and nongeometric design data. To CAD/CAM vendors, the task of interpreting and implementing these standards falls into their products. This task is a balancing action between users' needs, available development resources, and the technical specifications of standards. This paper explores an area of CAD/CAM systems development, particularly the implementation of the effective exchange files translators'. A new approach is introduced, which proposes to enclose all the translation operations concerning each exchange format to a separate DLL, thus making a 'plug-in.' Then, this plug-in could be used together with the CAD/CAM system or with specialized translation software. This approach allows to create new translators rapidly and to gain the reliable, high-efficiency, and reusable program code. The second part of the paper concerns the possible problems of translators' development. These difficulties often come from the exchange standards' misunderstanding or ambiguity in standards. All examples come from the authors' practice experiences of dealing with CAD/CAM systems.