Design and implementation of a collaborative 3D design system

After analyzing the requirement of large-scale equipment installation, both the functions and the faults of asynchronous collaborative design system and synchronous collaborative design system were discussed. And then, a combined collaborative design platform, which combined the product data management system with the synchronous collaborative design system, was proposed. A framework for the combined collaborative design platform was put forward. The product data management system and the synchronous collaborative design system were discussed in detail. And then, the strategies for sharing and exchanging of product data and information were presented. Operation steps of the combined collaborative platform were described in detail. Finally presented was a case study that using the combined collaborative design platform in electric dust collector installation.

The Design of Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware Systems

This paper gives an overview of a collaborative design system (CDS) for electromechanical products. To reduce design costs and to manufacture high-quality products, it is well known that concurrent engineering (CE) is a very efficient approach. Three-dimensional (3D) CAD system and engineering database system are essential components of CE. The CDS is an environment to realize CE. By creating 3D models in a computer and performing some simulations such as mechanical, electronic, software simulation and integrated simulations, it is possible to estimate functions, assemblability, manufacturability and so on, before making prototype models. In this paper, we outline the CDS and mainly discuss the total information management system (TIMS) which makes an important role of the CDS. This paper describes the implementation experience of some functions of the TIMS.

A collaborative design system architecture based on ontology is proposed. In the architecture, OWL is used to construct global shared ontology and local ontology; both of them are machine-interpretable. The former provides a semantic basis for the communication among designers so as to make the designers share the common understanding of knowledge. The latter which describes knowledge of designer's own is the basis of design by reasoning. SWRL rule base comprising rules defined based on local ontology is constructed to enhance the reasoning capability of local knowledge base. The designers can complete collaborative design at a higher level based on the local knowledge base and the global shared ontology, which enhances the intelligence of design. Finally, a collaborative design case is presented and analyzed.

The design of satellite orbit usually requires several space scientists that are responsible for different aspects of satellite orbit, such as orbital elements, satellite attitude. In order to make the result of design more intuitive and understandable to every involved space scientist and improve the efficiency of satellite orbit design, a real-time collaborative satellite orbit design system is developed. By introducing P2P structure, this system can be deployed in a local area network without the installation of backend server. By adopting message queue, the system can avoid potential inconsistency caused by the concurrent operation by different space scientists. Through this system, space scientists can easily exchange their designs for the satellite orbit in the local area network. Also, this system could guarantee the confidentiality of satellite orbit design and the fluency of network connection.

Conventional Product Data Management (PDM) supports aspects of information management but don’t promote the application of target oriented design methodologies like ‘Axiomatic Design’. For Manufacturing System Design PDM has to manage the actual targets, to direct a target-oriented procedure, and to manage objects for evaluation. Targets result from customers and manufacturers. The definition of ‘Functional Requirements’ and ‘Design Parameters’ has to be organized between different core competencies at different times and places. The goal is the configuration of a PDM framework supporting distributed collaborative manufacturing system design in a ‘Axiomatic Design’ oriented way. Based on an axiomatic approach, the implementation of this methodology in a distributed PDM framework is presented. For this, the necessary procedure and controls of ‘manufacturing system design’, information architecture and data interfaces to other software tools are considered and then the paper describes necessary metamodel.

The paper explores the key problems in CAD collaborative design of distributed synchronization. According to the characteristics of AutoCAD, the transmission of real-time operation command is replaced by modified underlying database, which improves the transmission speed of concurrent collaboration and reduces errors of real-time transmission. The paper presents the structure of the whole collaborative design system and expounds some key techniques of it, including the interface, data transmission, conflict elimination, fault disposal, etc.

Most past research efforts in co-editing focused on homogeneous co-editing, which allows multiple users to use the same editor to edit shared documents in the same session, and nearly all real-world co-editors, such as Google Docs, are homogeneous co-editors. In this work, we explore issues and solutions in building heterogeneous co-editing systems, which allow multiple users to use different editors to edit shared documents in the same session. To drive our exploration, we built a prototype heterogeneous co-editing system, named CoVim+CoEmacs, which allows multiple users to use full functionalities and UI features of two comprehensive and rivalry text editors, Vim and Emacs, in the same co-editing session. In this paper, we focus on technical issues in designing and implementing heterogeneous co-editors in general and CoVim+CoEmacs in particular. We have motivated this work by potential usage benefits of heterogeneous co-editing systems and used working scenarios under the CoVim+CoEmacs prototype to illustrate some novel usages and inner workings of such systems, but left systematic user studies on heterogeneous co-editing to future work. We hope the insights and experiences drawn from this work can not only contribute to advancing state-of-the-art collaborative system design and implementation, but also provide inspiration to future heterogeneous collaborative application system designers.

The concept of time in traditional distributed systems has been inherited in the Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) literature. The following assumptions have generally been made: (1) Events are atomic and their durations do not matter. (2) Total ordering of events can be achieved by some mechanical algorithm. (3) The relationship between events is determined solely by time (causal relationship). However, we observe that these assumptions are not appropriate if the goal is to faithfully preserve user intentions in collaborative systems. In particular, we discuss why and how these assumptions should be relaxed or removed in the design of collaborative editing systems.

This article addresses the issue of cultural influence in ontology design and reuse. The main assumption is that an ontology is not only a socio-technical artefact but also a cultural artefact. It contains embedded assumptions, core values, points of view, beliefs, thought patterns, etc. Based on results already found in several design fields the authors formulate some preliminary hypotheses about the possible relationships existing between culture and features of design process and produced ontology. A critical and qualitative analysis of six collaborative design systems has been performed to test some of the hypotheses, confirming some of the findings. The authors argue that a “culture aware” attitude may be of great importance for supporting the processes of cross cultural collaborative ontology design and the internalization and localization of these kinds of artefacts.

Service-Oriented architecture (SOA) has increasingly becoming an architectural evolution as one of the software design principles. This paper proposes an architecture design of an online collaborative agreement signing system based on SOA. The advantages over traditional designs are loose coupling, scalability and flexible combination of services. Web service model of the proposed solution is also described. Electronic seal and digital watermark are discussed as the domain knowledge as well. Sample software based on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) technology on .NET platform is introduced in the last part of the paper.

For effective collaborative working between the parties in a pattern design project team, it is essential that a highly-efficient and feasible cooperative platform is available. This paper presents an agent-based infrastructure for the automated collaborative design of textile industrial patterns. Cooperative awareness among distributed participants is one of the most important issues associated with collaborative pattern design. Several techniques based on awareness intensity management are proposed. In addition, the Pattern Knowledge Library enables intelligent design on the World Wide Web and thus greatly enhances the functionality of computer-supported cooperative design (CSCD). This prototype is intended to serve as a useful cooperative system for designers and should allow faster, better and more economic collaborative design of patterns.

As a result of analysis of the technical difficulties of cold roll-forming and the requirements of a collaborative design system for cold roll-forming, the physical four-tier structure of the cold roll-forming system is proposed. And then the architecture of a multi-agent based collaborative design system is introduced, with defining all the agents of the architecture in detail. Agents communicate with each other using XML technology. Based on it, a prototype system using JavaEE environment is developed. Customers and designers can access the system by internet, customers input product parameters, designers design the roll, and simulation program simulate the design parameters to decide whether the parameters is reasonable and send feedback message to designers. All data are stored in database to carry out data mining and to provide intelligent support. A case study is given at the end of this paper to validate the course of using this multi-agent system

Development of complicated products is a project of system engineeringIt involves extensive and complicated knowledge,design meth ods and auxiliary technologyVarious factors affect each otherSo,modern produ ct development is a typical group problem with distributed and dynamic features It is apparent superiority to solve this problem with a multiagent system re presenting various knowledge domainsDistributed artificial intelligence knowle dge being used,the multiagent collaborative design system concept and model ba sed on Internet environment are put forwardThe realizing method of product developing agents,interactive process among multiagents,and organiz ation and implementing of the design project of the multiagent collaborative d esign system are discussed in detailApplication examples are also presented

This study proposes to construct a product development model through using knowledge management system. This model aims to help the design engineers and their upstream and downstream partners in the supply chains to develop products synchronously and simultaneously through the computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) tools. The collaborative design in this model consists of three layers: data layer, information layer, and knowledge layer, which separately deals with product data exchange, information sharing and collaborative decision-making in the design process. Based on the principle of product design, the study had integrated the innovation method of theory of invention problem solving (TRIZ) with the methods of knowledge management to develop this collaborative design model. This model includes knowledge management platform and integrating the design notions of innovation, environment protection and manufacturability; it can also serve as a feasible reference for products collaborative design and development process. Key words: Knowledge management system, collaborative design, computer supported cooperative work.