IGES

The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) (pronounced eye-jess) is a vendor-neutral file format that allows the digital exchange of information among computer-aided design (CAD) systems.

The official title of IGES is Digital Representation for Communication of Product Definition Data, first published in January, 1980 by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards as NBSIR 80-1978. Many documents (like early versions of the Defense Standards MIL-PRF-28000 and MIL-STD-1840) referred to it as ASME Y14.26M, the designation of the ANSI committee that approved IGES Version 1.0.

Using IGES, a CAD user can exchange product data models in the form of circuit diagrams, wireframe, freeform surface or solid modeling representations. Applications supported by IGES include traditional engineering drawings, models for analysis, and other manufacturing functions.

IGES was an initiative of the United States Air Force (USAF) Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) project (1976-1984).

ICAM sought to develop procedures (IDEF) processes (Group Technology) and software (CAD/CAM) 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 industry. A serious issue was the incompatibility of data produced by the many CAD systems in use at the time. USAF/ICAM called a meeting at the National Bureau of Standards (now known as National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST) in 1978 to address this issue. Boeing offered to sell its CAD translation software to USAF for one United States dollar. USAF accepted this offer and contracted NIST to bring together a group of users and vendors, including Boeing, General Electric, Xerox, Computervision, Applicon 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.

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