Research On Real-Time Collaborative Design Technology

Real-time collaborative design technology is a typical applied research of Computer Supported Collaborative Design, which allows designers, operators and users in different locations cooperative with each other in the design via networks synchronously, thereby shortening the development cycles and costs of the product, also improving the product quality.Real-time, distributing and unrestricted user actions are three important requirements in the real-time collaborative design system. In the process of collaborating, asynchronies may occur due to the heterogeneity of the CAD system between users, multi-user synchronous operation and network transmission delay. These problems are discussed in the paper, and the major tasks are as follows.Firstly, the system architectural demands of the real-time collaborative design and the existing system architecture are discussed; meantime, the hybrid system architecture model is designed on the basis of three-tier architecture.Secondly, combined with the parametric feature of the collaborative design, the characteristics of data exchange in the process of heterogeneous collaborative CAD system designing are analyzed, presenting an approach to maintain the model data synchronously on the basis of commands map database through the operation of commands map mechanism.Thirdly, combined with the characteristics of real-time collaborative design system, a network model with the concurrency control mechanism is discussed, a concurrency control approach based on service priority is presented, meanwhile, Realization Principles of the options and dynamic adjusting strategies of mimimum delay master control station and the concurrency control approach are elaborated. Finally, based on the methods and strategies above, a real-time collaborative design prototype system is presented. It's been found that the approached proposed in this paper is viable. Conclusions of research are summarized and existed issues are pointed out for future research.