Research On Realtime Collaborative Design Technique Based On AutoCAD

Concurrent Engineering and Agile Manufacturing are essential manufacturing manners in the 21st century. Network Supported Collaborative Design (NSCD) is an important part of Concurrent Engineering. It enables designers, manufacturers, and users to participate in the design at different places synchronously or asynchronously. With its help, the development cycle of the product can be shortened, the cost of product development can be cut, and the quality of the product can be improved. Research on realtime collaborative design is a hot topic among the topics in NSCD.Major work in this study is as follows:(1) System models, work modes, and categories of NSCD are studied and three common manners of setting up NSCD systems: sharing UI(User Interface), extending single user CAD systems, and setting up new NSCD systems, are introduced in detail. One NSCD model and work mode, based on Agent and adopted in this study, are further detailed.(2) Adding network communication function to AutoCAD 2000 allows two AutoCAD systems to transmit data with each other on the Internet. This method is adapted in the study. AutoCAD database reactor is used to watch the changes of the database. The data is transmitted in Socket communication. Two modules, a Data Creating Module and a Network Communication Module, are set up.(3) A Dynamic Data Format is adopted to transmit changed data of AutoCAD entities considering the characteristics of the commands of AutoCAD 2000. This format furthest reduces the data transmission on the Internet and most improves the response ability and stability of the system. The Dynamic Data Format consists of a data segment and a command segment. DXF data format, including all the data of the AutoCAD entities, is adopted in the data segment.(4) It is studied to develop a Network Communication Module of the NSCD system with COM interfaces of NetMeeting. An experiment, using NetMeeting in point-to-point realtime collaborative design, is launched.