Companies can now make use of the Internet to communicate or do business. I
n the manufacturing industry, especially at the early phase of product deve
lopment, this technology has become essential for enabling designers, proce
ss planning engineers, and production personnel to work on a consistent set
of product information that is primarily CAD models. This article presents
a three-tier client/server structure on which a tool is built to visualize
CAD-neutral formats. This tool allows users to gather CAD models from loca
l disks, WWW servers, and others on the company's Intranet, and then assemb
le and display them on the local screen. Through this facility, users can m
odify and save a CAD model into a database so that all project participants
can work on the same set of information. The tool is platform independent
with superior local 3D manipulation capabilities and supports DXF, OBJ, and
VRML formats.