Introduction

STEP-TAS  is a data exchange format designed specifically for Thermal Analysis for Space and layered on top of the "STEP" standard that is more formally known as ISO 10303.

TASverter and STEP-TAS  have been developed by ESA D/TEC-MCV  to address the needs of product data exchange between the main analysis tools used within the European Space Thermal community.

The current version of TASverter is able to convert the geometrical part of radiative models to and from ESARAD and THERMICA native formats. It is intended to extend the functionality in the future to include the conversion of the mission definitions and radiative analysis results data. TASverter can also read and write TRASYS geometrical models, read a limited subset of geometrical elements from NASTRAN files, and geometrical data can also be saved to PATRAN.

In addition, it is possible to read results data from an ESATAN generated GFF file, and to write results data as a file of comma separated values for import into a spreadsheet.

In the future, it is intended that TASverter will also support the thermal lumped parameter model definitions such as ESATAN or one of the SINDA variants.

The TASverterGUI provides a simple graphical user interface to ease the use of the main TASverter tool. All of the actions that can be performed through this GUI can also be achieved by using TASverter from the command line.

The remainder of this document concentrates what is currently supported in the conversion of THERMICA and ESARAD geometrical models and presents an example to illustrate the current functionality. It also describes the intended extensions of the conversion functionality that have not yet been implemented.