IGES’s shortcoming:

Evaluation activity helped the community obviously define IGES's shortcomings:

• Flavorings: IGES contained many ways to capture the same information, which built proper interpretation largely based on the particular "flavor" of the pre- and post-processors.
• File Size/Processing Time: IGES was greatly criticized for needing large files that took hours or even days to parse, given the average computing power accessible at the time.
• Loss of Information throughout Exchange: Information would inevitably be lost while information is passed out between two CAD systems along inherently different capabilities.
• Lack of Discipline, Architecture: There was perception that IGES was built up without rigorous technical discipline, and that the use of information modelling would be useful.
• Upward Compatibility: The requirement for generations of processors to parse files compliant along earlier versions of IGES thwarted the breadth & rate of change in succeeding versions.
• Automated, instead of Improved upon, Paper System: IGES was seen as a technique to exchange engineering drawings, but not able of capturing complete product data (including administrative information) to enable more sophisticated automation.

Though PDDI was a research exercise, this contributed understanding, mechanisms, and models to future standards, mostly notably ISO 10303 - Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP).