Collaborative feature-based design via operations with a fine-grain product database

This paper reports a collaborative product design framework and a prototype system that supports multiple CAD systems. The key contribution is an ‘operation’-based, multi-application oriented, and near real-time collaboration mechanism which can significantly reduce collaboration communication load over the network. The mechanism is discussed and demonstrated with examples. To support the proposed multi-application collaboration system, a fine-grain feature-oriented product database is used. This research is a continued effort based on a shared common product modeling scheme, which covers fundamental issues of generic feature, feature level interoperability, engineering intent and operation definitions.