This section presents an overview of the CALS standards including their purpose, current status and implementation issues. It concentrates notably on:

• Digital Representation for Communication of Product Data: IGES Application subset.
• Markup requirements and Generic Style Specification for Electronic Printed Output and exchange of text (SGML).
• Hypermedia Time-Based Document Structuring Language (Hytime)
• Digital Representation for Communication of Illustration Data: CGM Application profile.
• Standards for the exchange of product model data (STEP).