(last updated 2002-08-20) Name : Parasolid E-mail : ps-mimetypes&ugs.com MIME media type name : Model MIME subtype name : Vendor Tree - vnd.parasolid.transmit.binary Required parameters : (none) Optional parameters : (none) Encoding considerations : File content is an octet-stream, and can contain arbitrary combinations of 8-bit data. It should thus be encoded as binary data, and base64 encoding is likely to be more efficient than quoted-printable. Security considerations : A corrupted or maliciously created file might possibly be able to crash a particular solid-modelling program that read it in, and in the presence of buffer-overrun or similar bugs in a particular solid modeller on a particular platform it might be possible to exploit these. Most applications that interpret the file format use the Parasolid kernel to do so, and that is written to be very cautious about the possibility of file corruption, but it still may be possible to generate a file that will crash it. However, short of crashing the program reading the file, the format just contains geometric and topological model data, and has no executable or scripted content and no features relating to disk or network access, so there should be no way to use it to send viruses or similar malicious code. Interoperability considerations : This file format is used by just about all solid modellers based on the Parasolid kernel. Details of the format may change with versions of the Parasolid kernel, but newer versions can always read in files written by older versions (though not necessarily vice versa). Translators to and from other solid-modelling file formats, including STEP, Pro-Engineer, IGES, and Catia are commercially available, though such conversion is typically lossy and on occasion may fail. Published specification : The full specification is not published, but some discussion of it can be found in the specification for the related model/vnd.parasolid.transmit.text format (which we are applying for at the same time). This is available in PDF on request from UG Solutions marketing: see http://www.ugsolutions.com/products/parasolid/top_level/contact.shtml to locate the Marketing Representative for your region. For a short while after the submission of this application it can also be downloaded from: http://www.parasolid.com/downloads/xt_download.shtml Applications which use this media : Solid modelling software that uses the Parasolid kernel (currently over 200, see http://www.ugsolutions.com/products/parasolid/customers/ps_cad.shtml and linked pages for a selection), plus suitable solid-modelling file format translators. Additional information : 1. Magic number(s) : (complex: see comment) 2. File extension(s) : .X_B (recommended), .xmt_bin (deprecated) 3. Macintosh file type code : none: as far as we know no current Mac apps read the format While the file is binary, it has a header region that is text (standardly with LF "\n" line endings): The first 3 lines of text in the file are always: **ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz************** ************ **PARASOLID !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~0123456789************************** **PART1; The lines will normally be separated by single LF ("\n") characters. In addition, the following 3 lines of text are always found in the file somewhere near the beginning, in the order given, though they may have other data between them: **PART2; **PART3; **END_OF_HEADER***************************************************** ************ The line after the END_OF_HEADER line always begins with a 'B': this is the only thing that distinguishes the header from that of the related .X_T format, where this line always begins with a 'T'. Again, these lines are normally terminated by single LF ("\n") characters. Person to contact for further information : 1. Name : Parasolid 2. E-mail : ps-mimetypes&ugs.com Intended usage : Common Exchanging solid-modelling data, particularly for CAD/CAM applications. Author/Change controller : John Juckes Change History -------------- 2002-08-20 Changed contact information from 2. John Juckes and Roger Dearnaley to 2. Parasolid