Introduction

ISO 10303 is an International Standard for the computer-interpretable representation of product information and for the exchange of product data. The objective is to provide a neutral mechanism capable of describing products throughout their life cycle. This mechanism is suitable not only for neutral file exchange, but also as a basis for implementing and sharing product databases, and as a basis for archiving.

This part of ISO 10303 specifies an application module for the representation of various physical breakdowns of products. A physical breakdown is a partitioning of a physical view of a product into a set of related elements to support engineering, analysis and other activities that can be performed in relation to the product. These breakdowns are explicit, parent-child views that comprise the physical elements.

The physical breakdown view is complementary to the assembly structure and bill of materials views that are the primary focus for manufacturing (realization) of a physical product (see Part definition relationship). Physical breakdowns can be of designs or realized individual physical products. For any product, more than one physical breakdown can exist to support various different engineering activities.

EXAMPLE    An aircraft wing might be described as comprising an upper surface and a lower surface. This description can be orthogonal to a parts description.

A Physical_breakdown is also a Breakdown and a Product and, thus, has identification and can have versions (Physical_breakdown_version).

Each version of a Physical_breakdown ( Physical_breakdown_version ) is related to the product that is the subject of the breakdown through Breakdown_of .

The constituent components of a physical breakdown are represented by Physical_element objects.

A Physical_element can appear in one or more physical breakdowns and is a Breakdown and a Product with identification, versions ( Physical_element_version ) and views ( Physical_element_definition ) of those versions.

A Physical_element_usage identifies the parent-child relationship between a pair of Physical_element objects in the context of the relevant breakdown. The complete physical breakdown hierarchy comprises a tree of Physical_element_usage objects.

This second edition of this part of ISO 10303 incorporates the modifications to the first edition listed below.

Modifications made to the mapping specification of the following entity definitions:

• Breakdown_element_definition - added.

Clause 1 defines the scope of the application module and summarizes the functionality and data covered. Clause 3 lists the words defined in this part of ISO 10303 and gives pointers to words defined elsewhere. The information requirements of the application are specified in Clause 4 using terminology appropriate to the application. A graphical representation of the information requirements, referred to as the application reference model, is given in Annex C. Resource constructs are interpreted to meet the information requirements. This interpretation produces the module interpreted model (MIM). This interpretation, given in 5.1, shows the correspondence between the information requirements and the MIM. The short listing of the MIM specifies the interface to the resources and is given in 5.2. A graphical representation of the short listing of the MIM is given in Annex D.

In this International Standard, the same English language words may be used to refer to an object in the real world or concept, and as the name of an EXPRESS data type that represents this object or concept.

The following typographical convention is used to distinguish between these. If a word or phrase occurs in the same typeface as narrative text, the referent is the object or concept. If the word or phrase occurs in a bold typeface or as a hyperlink, the referent is the EXPRESS data type.

The name of an EXPRESS data type may be used to refer to the data type itself, or to an instance of the data type. The distinction between these uses is normally clear from the context. If there is a likelihood of ambiguity, either the phrase "entity data type" or "instance(s) of" is included in the text.

Double quotation marks " " denote quoted text. Single quotation marks ' ' denote particular text string values.

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