Sif: a Solid Interchange Format for Rapid Prototyping

Inspired by the success of the CIF format in making rapid VLSI prototyping available to the naive designer, we are developing SIF, a new Solid Interchange Format for mechanical design. SIF is a terse, human readable ASCII format providing processand resolution-independent ideal shape specification, explicit design intent and topological information; it also addresses issues of precision and tolerancing. SIF should carry enough information so that back and forth interactions between designers and fabricators can be reduced to a single one-way part submission after the designer runs standardized test programs to assure the consistency of the SIF representation and the manufacturability of the part with the given process.