Compatibility Improvement of Interrelated Items in Exchange Files—A General Method for Supporting the Data Integrity of Digital Twins

Abstract

Stakeholders in the industry are increasingly using digital twins to take advantage of continuous digitization. The widely used methods for transferring partial models of digital twins within various heterogeneous systems rely on standardized, neutral file-based exchange. However, using differently implemented routines in the pre- and postprocessors of the systems engaged during data transmission leads to compatibility problems. Complete information transfer is not guaranteed, although potentially all information is available in the individual exchange file. To utilize the full potential of digital twins, this paper presents a method for directly adapting the content stored in an exchange file to systematically achieve compatibility. In the first step, we define a general structure to specify interrelated, nonconforming objects that are stored in the exchange file. We present five conditions that specify a compatibility problem in the following steps. On this basis, the applicant can solve various exchange problems for the indicated scenario in the third step. After explaining the approach in general terms, we demonstrate its generality by discussing two diverging use cases based on the exchange formats STEP and INP. We implemented the method in software terms, and the implementation indicates that this method can fix compatibility problems in an automated way.