IGES - File Format

File Format

An IGES file is composed of 80-character ASCII records, a record length derived from the punched card era. Text strings are represented in "Hollerith" format, the number of characters in the string, followed by the letter "H", followed by the text string, e.g., "4HSLOT" (this is the text string format used in early versions of the Fortran language). Early IGES translators had problems with IBM mainframe computers because the mainframes used EBCDIC encoding for text, and some EBCDIC-ASCII translators would either substitute the wrong character, or improperly set the Parity bit, causing a misread.

Here is a very small IGES file from 1987, containing only two POINT (Type 116), two CIRCULAR ARC (Type 100), and two LINE (Type 110) entities. It represents a slot, with the points at the centers of the two half-circles that form the ends of the slot, and the two lines that form the sides.

S 1 1H,,1H;,4HSLOT,37H$1$DUA2:SLOT.IGS;, G 1 17HBravo3 BravoDRAFT,31HBravo3->IGES V3.002 (02-Oct-87),32,38,6,38,15, G 2 4HSLOT,1.,1,4HINCH,8,0.08,13H871006.192927,1.E-06,6., G 3 31HD. A. Harrod, Tel. 313/995-6333,24HAPPLICON - Ann Arbor, MI,4,0; G 4 116 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1D 1 116 1 5 1 0 0D 2 116 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 1D 3 116 1 5 1 0 0D 4 100 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 1D 5 100 1 2 1 0 0D 6 100 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 1D 7 100 1 2 1 0 0D 8 110 5 0 1 0 0 0 0 1D 9 110 1 3 1 0 0D 10 110 6 0 1 0 0 0 0 1D 11 110 1 3 1 0 0D 12 116,0.,0.,0.,0,0,0; 1P 1 116,5.,0.,0.,0,0,0; 3P 2 100,0.,0.,0.,0.,1.,0.,-1.,0,0; 5P 3 100,0.,5.,0.,5.,-1.,5.,1.,0,0; 7P 4 110,0.,-1.,0.,5.,-1.,0.,0,0; 9P 5 110,0.,1.,0.,5.,1.,0.,0,0; 11P 6 S 1G 4D 12P 6 T 1

The file is divided into 5 sections: Start, Global, Directory Entry, Parameter Data, and Terminate indicated by the characters S, G, D, P, or T in column 73. The characteristics and geometric information for an entity is split between two sections; one in a two record, fixed-length format (the Directory Entry, or DE Section), the other in a multiple record, comma delimited format (the Parameter Data, or PD Section), as can be seen in a more human-readable representation of the file.

When displayed, the user should see two yellow points (hard to see on a white background, but most CAD systems use a black background), one located at the origin of model space, two red circular arcs, and two green lines.