Research On Data Sharing And Application Integration Between PDM And CAD

As important tools & systems to enhance efficiency of product development, CAD & PDM (Product Data Management) have been wildly employed in enterprises of industry. In view of the flow of information in industry, CAD & PDM are located in upriver & downriver in product development process respectively, & they have lots of relations in business logically. The data-sharing & application integration between the two systems can result in great improvement in system operation efficiency, shorten the development cycle of products and enhance productivity.This article researches on data-sharing & application integration between PDM & CAD. The two systems are not equal because they are located in difference layers in enterprise applications. The data-sharing between them mainly refers to the process that PDM gets, uses & manages datum about product design from CAD, while the application integration mainly means CAD calls system functions of PDM, manages product design information & process, & realize cooperated product design process on the platform of PDM & with its services.The main contents of this article include-the system requirements for data-sharing & integration between PDM & CAD, involved techniques, standards & their application, the main approaches to, key techniques & system structure of data-sharing & system integration between them.The data-sharing & application integration between PDM & CAD requires that the two systems can transfer needed & apprehensible datum to each other & can interoperate on each other-here, mainly means CAD can user operation of PDM. The main techniques & standards involved in system integration & data-sharing includes-API (Application Interface) technique, XML standard & Web Services, etc.The realization of data-sharing between the two systems mainly has 3 ways--usingstandards for information exchange, using open-formatted file and using API. And the approach & process of CAD calling PDM functions to realize cooperated design process is that the programmable components of CAD call PDM API or PDM WebServices, and transfer information, such as datum, resources & document locations to the corresponding methods in a form of XML, then use PDM system functions & realize computer-aided cooperated design on the platform of PDM. Web Services is chosen for exposing programming interface of PDM for application integration because it has superiority on platform opening, distributing & loosely coupled calling. And in the CAD end, Add-In is chosen as the component for secondary development. The article puts forward the system requirements, technical courses & system architecture for data-sharing & application integration between PDM & CAD, presents the key techniques & their examples, proves the technical feasibility & brings forward a future for integrated application of systems. And it brings a technical base for further research on data-sharing & application integration of PDM & CAD, & for eventually realizing integrated application between the two systems.