[1]: 59 Its official title is: Automation systems and integration — Product data representation and exchange.
The nature of this description makes it suitable not only for neutral file exchange, but also as a basis for implementing and sharing product databases and archiving.
STEP addresses product data from mechanical and electrical design, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, analysis and manufacturing, as well as additional information specific to various industries such as automotive, aerospace, building construction, ship, oil and gas, process plants and others.
STEP is developed and maintained by the ISO technical committee TC 184, Automation systems and integration, sub-committee SC 4, Industrial data.
The basis for STEP was the Product Data Exchange Specification (PDES), which was initiated during the mid-1980's and was submitted to ISO in 1988.
In the second phase the capabilities of STEP were widely extended, primarily for the design of products in the aerospace, automotive, electrical, electronic, and other industries.
[11] Basic harmonization between the APs especially in the geometric areas was achieved by introducing the Application Interpreted Constructs (AIC, 500 series).
AP242 edition 2, published in April 2020, extends edition 1 domain by the description of Electrical Wire Harnesses and introduces an extension of STEP modelisation and implementation methods based on SysML and system engineering with an optimized XML implementation method.
Every AP defines one or several Conformance Classes, suitable for a particular kind of product or data exchange scenario.
The common generic data models are the basis for interoperability between APs for different kinds of industries and life cycle stages.
The Application Interpreted Constructs (AIC) solved this problem for common specializations of generic concepts, primarily in the geometric area.
To address the problem of harmonizing the ARM models and their mapping to the AIM the STEP modules were introduced.
The STEP APs can be roughly grouped into the three main areas design, manufacturing and life cycle support.
The original intent of STEP was to publish one integrated data-model for all life cycle aspects.