Chapter 6: Interoperability

Title: An environment for collaborative design: a new approach to CAD tool interoperability

Author(s): Hanène Chettaoui

Address: Laboratory G-SCOP, INPGrenoble – UJF - CNRS, BP53, 38041, Grenoble Cedex, France

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2007 pp. 393 - 402

Abstract/Summary: Computer Aided Design (CAD) are the tools for modelling product design intent. Today's complex design processes require the use of multiple CAD tools that operate in multiple frameworks making management of the complete design process difficult. One way to achieve improvements in efficiency in product design process is through better collaboration of designers working on a common design task and interacting in the design process. In a collaborative design environment, designer interactions are assisted by sharing the common design information through a specific framework. In this paper the Product Process Organisation (PPO) meta-model framework is used to support information sharing. To share information issued from CAD systems is not easy because of the heterogeneity of used tools. To make collaboration efficient, each expert application or design tool should connect and interoperate with the shared framework. This paper illustrates the importance of interoperability as an issue for collaborative design. Then this work describes a meta-modelling architecture to synchronize heterogeneous models. A main step is the extraction of a model from an expert application in a readable format. We use a model driven approach to ease interoperability management. A case study is applied to EspritTM manufacturing model enabling EspritTM to interoperate with the PPO collaborative environment.

Order a copy of this article