The compatibility of exchange data has been the problem of CAD/CAM systems since the very beginning. National and international organizations have addressed the issue through development and release of standards for the exchange of geometric and non-geometric design data. CAD/CAM vendors are in charge with the task of interpreting and implementing these standards into their products. This paper explores an area of CAD/CAM systems development, which deals with effective exchange standards translators’ implementation. We introduce the new approach, which proposes to enclose all the translation operations concerning each exchange format to a separate DLL, thus making a “plug-in.” Later this plug-in could be used together with the CAD/CAM system or with specialized translation software. This approach allows rapidly creating new translators and gaining the reliable, high-efficiency, and, what is important, reusable program code. All examples come from the authors’ practice experiences of dealing with CAD/CAM systems.

ABSTRACT 
1. Introduction 
2. Background 
3. The Plug-in Technology applied to Data Translation Development 
4. Programming the data transfer 
5. Conclusion 
Acknowledgement 
References

• Egor A. Chernopyatov
• Choon-Man Lee
• Won-Jee Chung
• Jon-Yun Jung