The Research And Development Of Collaborative Design System Based On 3D CAD

Collaborative design systems support multiple users who distributed in locations to participate in mechanical components'synchronous design and evaluation, which are both concurrent and synchronized. The research on collaborative modeling system is only at an early stage at present, so there is few existing systems are developed. Because of the synchronous method of models and network bandwidth is far from the requirements of Collaborative activities, the support to collaborative design by existing systems is far from consummation. In order to overcome the difficulties in collaborative modeling and synchronous method of models, the thesis first puts forward a structure of collaborative design system based on 3D CAD and then defines the Collaborative design Communication Protocol (CCP), which can support collaborative synchronous modeling. Later on the thesis presents a communicate method of messages based on XML and an incremental synchronous method of models based on CCP and messages. The method of data management in collaborative design systems is typically based on whole models and documents as well as relationship database. The shortcoming of this method is mainly about low level and efficiency in collaborative activities. The thesis particularly discusses the method of data management based on Object-Oriented Database (OODB). Based on the methodology mentioned above, under the support of Hi-Tech Research and Development Program of China, a main Collaborative Design system based on 3D CAD (CoCAD) has been developed. The system is integrated with KMCAD 3D system and supports multiple users to take part in synchronous modeling and browsing. Several collaborative methods such as synchronous browsing, collaborative meeting, text communication and web publishing are realized in this system. With the system, the collaborative design activities can be proceeded more effectively.