NF ISO/ASTM 52915

ISO/ASTM 52915:2013 describes a framework for an interchange format to address the current and future needs of additive manufacturing technology. For the last three decades, the STL file format has been the industry standard for transferring information between design programs and additive manufacturing equipment. An STL file contains information only about a surface mesh and has no provisions for representing color, texture, material, substructure, and other properties of the fabricated target object. As additive manufacturing technology is quickly evolving from producing primarily single-material, homogenous shapes to producing multimaterial geometries in full colour with functionally graded materials and microstructures, there is a growing need for a standard interchange file format that can support these features.

ISO/ASTM 52915:2016 provides the specification for the Additive Manufacturing File Format (AMF), an interchange format to address the current and future needs of additive manufacturing technology. The AMF may be prepared, displayed and transmitted provided the requirements of this specification are met. When prepared in a structured electronic format, strict adherence to an extensible markup language (XML)[1] schema is required to support standards-compliant interoperability. A W3C XML schema definition (XSD) for the AMF is available from ISO from http://standards.iso.org/iso/52915 and from ASTM from www.astm.org/MEETINGS/images/amf.xsd. An implementation guide for such an XML schema is provided in Annex A. It is recognized that there is additional information relevant to the final part that is not covered by the current version of this International Standard. Suggested future features are listed in Annex B. ISO/ASTM 52915:2016 does not specify any explicit mechanisms for ensuring data integrity, electronic signatures and encryptions.