A framework for collaborative top-down assembly design

This paper presents a new system framework for collaborative top-down assembly design. Different from current computer-aided design (CAD) systems, the framework allows a group of designers to collaboratively conduct product design in a top-down manner. In our framework, a multi-level and distributed assembly model is adopted to effectively support collaborative top-down assembly design. Meanwhile, fine-granularity collaborative design functionalities are provided. First, the coupled structural parameters involved in the distributed skeleton models of the product can be collaboratively determined by the correlative designers based on fuzzy and utility theory. Second, agent based design variation propagation is achieved to ensure the consistency of the multi-level and distributed assembly model during the whole design process. Third, collaborative design of assembly interfaces between the components assigned to different designers is supported. The prototype implementation shows that our framework works well for supporting practical collaborative top-down assembly design.     

Internet Based Collaborative Product Conceptual Design

Generation of Product Concept needs to give full play to the designers' innovative potential and collaborative work of experts in different fields. However, the collaborative innovative capabilities of geographically distributed designers are often limited and hindered by space and time. Therefore, on the basis of the requirements analysis of Internet based collaborative conceptual design and the research work we have done, this paper proposes the overall framework of supporting collaborative conceptual design on Internet. Based on this overall framework, the authors further put forward collaborative conceptual design process model that includes three stages: concept generation, concept communication and optimal product concept selection. At the end of the paper, the experiment environment of collaborative design is described. The overall framework and collaborative conceptual design process model proposed can take full advantage of Internet and give full play to experts' experiences and wisdom, so that the rapid development and innovative design of product can be provided with effectively and efficiently implemental mode and support on Internet.     

An Exploratory Study: Supporting Collaborative Multimedia Systems Design

Multimedia systems design generally requires a collaborative effort from a group of designers with a variety of backgrounds and tasks, such as content experts, instructional designers, media specialists, users, and so forth. However, currently available design tools on the market are mainly designed for a single user. Tools intended to support a collaborative design process should coordinate independent activities of individual designers.This research investigated support for work groups engaged in designing multimedia systems. Specifically, it discussed a new collaborative design environment, called the KMS (Knowledge Management System)-based design environment, in which multimedia designers could share their design knowledge freely. Through two experimental groups, the research investigated impacts of the KMS-based design environment on their collaborative design activities (knowledge creating, knowledge securing, knowledge distributing, and knowledge retrieving activities). The research findings showed that the KMS-based design environment was a promising environment for collaborative multimedia systems design. More specifically, the research findings indicated that the KMS-based design environment supported creating, securing, and retrieving knowledge, but it did not support distributing knowledge. In addition, the research found that the social interactions between group members played important roles in the success of the collaborative multimedia systems design and that the KMS-based design environment did not support the socialization of group members. Furthermore, the research found that the inability of the KMS-based design environment to support the socialization was linked to its low performance level in supporting the knowledge distributing activity. The research explored the desired features of a collaborative support tool for multimedia systems design.     

An Internet-based intelligent design system for injection moulds

The rapid growth of Internet and information technologies in recent years provides a solution to support and facilitate collaborative product developments among different geographically distributed enterprises. An effective and feasible tool to aid the collaborative development of injection moulds can be realized by developing an Internet-based mould design system as one of the modules of a collaborative product development system. This paper presents a prototype Internet-based intelligent design system for injection moulds. The architecture of the system consists of an interactive KB mould design system embedded in an Internet environment. A Java-enabled solution together with artificial intelligence techniques is employed to develop such a networked interactive CAD system. In this system, the computational module, the knowledge base module and the graphic module for generating mould features are integrated within an interactive CAD-based framework. The knowledge base of the system would be accessed by mould designers through interactive programs so that their own intelligence and experience could also be incorporated with the total mould design. The approach adopted both speeds up the design process and facilitates design standardization which in turn increases the speed of mould manufacture. A practical case study is presented to illustrate the operations of the Internet-based mould design system.     

A distributed and interactive system to integrated design and simulation for collaborative product development

The goal of applying collaborative product development in industry has raised the need to develop software tools supporting system integration and group collaboration. Current methods and tools mainly focus on the collaborative creation of design components and assemblies. However, few of them support the collaborative work in developing simulation models so that proposed design concepts and solutions can be evaluated by integrating expertise from several disciplines. The purpose of this research is to develop a distributed and interactive system on which designers and experts can work together to create, integrate and run simulations for engineering design. To develop such a system, a number of issues, e.g. effectiveness and efficiency of modeling work, the re-use of models, interaction and cooperation, accuracy of simulation, collaborative operation on models, etc., need to be addressed. This paper describes an open architecture to developing simulations for engineering design in a distributed and collaborative environment, identifies a set of key issues raised in this architecture, and presents the techniques employed in our solution.     

A method for integrating ergonomics analysis into maintainability design in a virtual environment

Designers must consider human factors/ergonomics when making decisions from the perspective of maintainability. As an important aspect of maintainability, maintenance space should be made adequate at the design stage to achieve a convenient maintenance process. A maintenance space evaluation method that considers ergonomics is proposed in this study. By comparing free swept volumes and constrained swept volumes in a virtual environment, maintenance space could be evaluated quantitatively and objectively. The results of the evaluation are obtained by combining the principles of ergonomics and maintainability. These results can help designers improve product design such that it fits ergonomics and maintainability requirements. A case study is introduced at the end of this paper to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method in efficiently evaluating the maintenance space based on the layout design of the product components in the design stage.Relevant to industryFor a large number of disasters caused by human errors in current industry, the result of this study contributes a guide to fully consider human factors in maintainability design through virtual environment and is beneficial to designers and engineers of industrial application fields.     

复杂产品协同设计中数据建模与驱动方法

针对在传统基于工作流的协同设计中,不同专业设计人员交流和任务协调困难导致产品设计效率低下的问题,提出复杂产品"一元三层"数据模型和基于数据驱动的复杂产品协同设计技术。首先采用多维多粒度的数据建模和本体描述方法完成了对复杂产品的信息建模,然后采用基于本体的语义检索技术完成协同设计过程任务的数据订阅,最后实现基于数据订阅/发布的复杂产品任务协同技术。实验结果表明,基于数据驱动的复杂产品协同设计技术解决了传统协同设计过程中不同专业设计人员之间交流与任务协调的困难,实现复杂产品协同设计过程的螺旋式上升,从而提高了产品设计效率。     

基于Agent分布式仪表产品造型协同设计应用研究

基于Agent代理,提出将Web技术和Multi-Agent技术融合的分布式协同设计系统,为产品设计过程中设计人员之间的信息共享和资源共享提供了更有效的方法.在分析系统体系结构的基础上,着重阐述了Multi-Agent代理模型和工作原理,并将其应用于仪表产品造型设计系统中,实现基于Agent的分布式仪表产品造型设计原型系统.     

面向定制化牙科产品的协同设计系统的研究

为了快速设计和制造定制化牙科产品,结合牙科产品的特点,分析了定制化牙科产品协同设计系统中各组织间的协同作用、产品协同设计过程以及协同设计系统的结构;以定制化托槽为例,研究了结合托槽设计及选区激光熔化快速成型的协同设计系统的产品设计制造流程,运用统一建模语言建立了定制化托槽的协同设计过程.实例表明,采用该系统,牙科产品开发商与牙科医生协作实现快速设计并制造定制化产品.     

面向机床产品的协同设计支持环境的研究

对机床产品协同设计过程及其特点进行研究，采用UML统一建模语言中的泳道图表示机床协同设计过程，提出了面向机床产品的协同设计支持环境的层次结构，该协同设计支持环境主要由3个方面的内容组成：对机床产品设计开发活动的支持、对设计活动单元组织和管理的支持、对设计活动单元间协同的支持。采用分布式为主、集中式为辅的方式，建立了面向机床产品的协同设计支持环境的体系结构，并对实现该体系结构的任务规划、协同约束模型、冲突消解等关键技术进行了研究。在此基础上，开发了面向机床产品的协同设计支持环境的原型系统。     

A system framework for OKP product planning in a cloud-based design environment

Nowadays, one-of-a-kind (OKP) companies, which generally operate in an 'engineer-to-order' business mode, strive to deliver individualized products with quality to achieve customer satisfaction. Thus, an accurate and prompt analysis of customer requirements (CRs) in the early design stage is critical to its success. However, most OKP companies are small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Due to the limited resources and low product planning budget, they often cannot obtain abundant CR information nor can they afford the expense of complicated planning process. To address these issues, a system framework is proposed in support of OKP product planning process in a cloud-based design (CBD) environment. The challenges and future market niches of OKP companies are presented. The comparison of typical distributed systems shows that CBD, which utilizes advanced information technologies and business model, has advantages in providing sufficient resources, decreasing product development time span for OKP companies in a cost-efficient way. This article describes the proposed system architecture, the business interaction process and the information communication among customers, designers and marketing analysts at the product planning stage. To validate the proposed framework, a prototype system module MyProduct is under development in the CBD environment with an illustrative example.     

实时图案协同设计中冲突问题的研究

在Internet环境中,允许多个用户同时对同一图案的任意绘图区进行设计是图案协同设计系统应满足的基本要求．然而不同设计者在协同设计过程中由于设计意图的不同而引起的操作冲突是不可避免的,因此冲突问题是图案协同设计系统的关键问题之一．着重讨论了冲突的定义,冲突的多种避免方式,提出了高效的冲突检测算法和一种能保护用户协同设计意图的冲突解决方法——基于冲突操作锁定的冲突解决方法．这些方法和算法的实现使得在分布式计算环境下协同设计的冲突问题得到了较完善的解决．     

Collaborative virtual prototyping of product assemblies over the Internet

Product assembly design is a complex activity involving collaboration between several designers. Currently, many manufacturing firms out source the design and development of different portions of a product to different suppliers. Due to the absence of an integrated tool for collaborative product assembly design, designers currently follow an indirect approach. This makes collaboration an unorganized and inefficient activity. This paper discusses the architectural novelties and design considerations utilized to develop an integrated collaborative assembly design tool. Further, the scenarios of using such a tool are discussed in detail. This discussion highlights how the tool contributes towards making collaboration an organized and efficient activity and enables designers to rapidly design and prototype the product assembly.     

Creating shared design thinking process for collaborative design

Shared understanding about both the design content and the design process has significant meaning for collaborative design, which influences the quality of final products. Existing approaches have difficulties in supporting designers to structure and share their design thinking while they are performing practical tasks. In this paper we propose Shared Design Thinking Process Model (S-DTPM) to support collaborative design, which is based on co-evolutionary design theory and existing design rationale frameworks. Two principles for S-DTPM have been considered. The elements and representation schema of S-DTPM have been discussed in detail. Based on S-DTPM, a prototype system has been developed for supporting collaborative thinking and capturing shared design rationale. An example, collaborative design is taken to validate the proposed model. S-DTPM can help designers to create shared understanding about the design as well as record shared design thinking process for future use such as design review, design change and redesign.     

Web-based distributed system and database modeling for concurrent design

This research introduces a new approach for Web-based collaborative concurrent design. In this approach, systems, product libraries, and product databases for modeling different product development life-cycle aspects are distributed at different locations that are linked through the Web. Product modeling libraries are described as class features. A class feature at a remote location can be used for defining a new class feature at the local site. Product modeling systems distributed at different locations are used for creating product databases that are described by instance features. A system at one location can be implemented using the functions provided at other locations as the components. Different life-cycle databases at different locations are associated by their relations. The optimal design considering relevant life-cycle aspects is identified using the distributed product life-cycle modeling systems and databases.     

Multi-User Collaborative Assembly Planning over the Internet

1 Introduction Assembly planning is an important issue of product design for assembly, and many achievements have been obtained. Techniques such as geometric reasoning [1,2], genetic algorithms (GA) [3], virtual assembly [4,5] and so on are employed to assembly planning of relatively simple products successfully. But for the more complex cases, there is a combinational complexity problem when the geometric reasoning method is used. The fitness function in GA cannot take into account various…     

Development of control mechanisms to support coherency of product model during cooperative design process

Product development became an increasingly collaborative and distributed activity. Collaborative design process gathers experts from different backgrounds and areas for a common objective about product development. An effective exchange support is expected to share and integrate design knowledge avoiding conflicts between designers. The management of heterogeneous product representation is a major step to integrate expert activities. To successfully manage this process, this paper proposes: (1) A research experimental platform for cooperative design in product development processes. (2) A new constraint based model to maintain complex relationships in multi-disciplinary cooperative design. (3) A model differentiation technique, which identifies differences and conflicts between models. (4) A Meta-rule concept, which controls the constraint network in design process, leading to a new notification mechanism to present conflict to all corresponding actors.     

Multi-User Collaborative Assembly Planning over the Internet

Due to the increasing complexity of products and for the distributed product development, more closely collaborative work among designers is required. A collaborative assembly planning approach is proposed to support assembly planning in a networked environment. The working procedure is depicted and the key techniques including collaborative-planning-oriented assembly decomposition modeling, assembly assignment modeling, and sub-plans merging are addressed. By incorporating visual models at client side with assembly application models at server side, a web-based supporting environment for collaborative assembly planning has been developed using VRML and Java-EAI techniques. A case study is given to illustrate the feasibility and validity of the idea.     

A communication technology for internet-based collaboration optimization for distributed structural systems

Along with development of incorporation of world economy, collaborative design and collaborative manufacture of enterprises often occur. Subsystems of a complex product system are often analyzed and optimized individually by different design units distributed at different places. In order to find the optimum designs of overall product systems automatically, the internet-based global coordinating optimization is necessary. In this paper, an email-based communication technology of global coordinative optimization of distributed structural systems is proposed, and its realizing approach, communication, process control, practical software and application example are presented.     

Extending Design Environments to Software Architecture Design

Designing a complex software system is a cognitively challenging task; thus, designers need cognitive support to create good designs. Domain-oriented design environments are cooperative problem-solving systems that support designers in complex design tasks. In this paper we present the architecture and facilities of Argo, a domain-oriented design environment for software architecture. Argo's own architecture is motivated by the desire to achieve reuse and extensibility of the design environment. It separates domain-neutral code from domain-oriented code, which is distributed among active design materials as opposed to being centralized in the design environment. Argo's facilities are motivated by the observed cognitive needs of designers. These facilities extend previous work in design environments by enhancing support for reflection-in-action, and adding new support for opportunistic design and comprehension and problem solving.