IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) was among first vendor-neutral CAD formats designed to enable interoperability between different CAD systems. The latest versions of IGES have been approved by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and published by US PRO (U.S. Product Data Association). The latest officially approved version of the IGES standard is version 5.3 which was published in 1996. Nonetheless, IGES remains a broadly used format (along with STEP) supported by all major CAD/CAM/CAE systems such as CATIA, Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks, Solid Edge, NX, Pro/Engineer, Creo and multiple others. IGES files usually have *.igs or *.iges file name extensions.
A PRT format is used to store components of 3D CAD models. It may contain lines, surfaces, textures, dimensions, and metadata.
The .prt extension is mostly associated with the Siemens NX Part (PRT) file type as an acronym for "part". PRT files may be exported to various standard CAD and 3D modeling formats (e.g. OBJ and STL) in addition to being utilized natively in Siemens NX.
The PRT file is also a part created by PTC Creo Parametric 3D software. In PTC Creo, project part files can be combined in a single assembly file with an ASM extension.
Despite the same extension name different CAD software produce PRT files differently, i.e. PRT files produced with Creo are not the same as PRT files generated from NX.
The PRT extension is also compatible with Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS.
A CAD file is an output of a CAD software, containing key information about the designed object: its geometry and topology representation, 3D model hierarchy, metadata, and visual attributes depending on the format of the file.
Read moreCAD Exchanger enables RapidSense and RapidPlan to read 3D CAD formats thanks to a unified API, fast data processing, adjustable meshing, and cancellation support.
Read moreWe will start a series of a blog posts dedicated to different 3D CAD file formats. We begin with the veteran among CAD data - IGES.
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