Reasons for transferring data:

The three major reasons for transferring data among CAD systems (or CAE systems or agents etc.) are following:

 (i) To communicate along with remote computers and design workstations. Practical limitations, such like shortage of workstations, may already lead to storage/retrieval and interchange of CAD models.

 (ii) Long-duration storage & retrieval, and archival purposes.

(iii) Throughout the design procedure, a CAD system can turn out to be incapable of performing the required modelling operations. After that it may be decided to send the CAD model to a different CAD system which does have the needed functionality.

To develop the control over the several exchange processes and to decrease the number of necessary converters, one can use a CAD transfer standard. Well-known standards include, DXF, IGES and STEP. If a particular standard is utilized, the sending system may export the data in the format described by the standard. The receiving system needs to be able to read and interpret this data .Later we shall see that the use of a standard only superficially solves some of the interoperability problems.