Internet-based collaborative product design with assembly features and virtual design spaces

Typically, during product design collaborating, designers share design data and assembly models. However, due to the limited bandwidth of the Internet transfer of detailed CAD based assembly models is slow. Therefore, tools b ased on polygonized representations of assembly models have been utilized d uring collaborative design. These models are primarily used for visualizati on, which is an important activity during modeling. However, providing the designers with the ability to perform real-time geometric modification, ass embly constraints specification and concurrent design of different componen ts/sub-assemblies will enable designers to collaborate effectively during d esign. This paper presents a new geometric representation called the AREP a nd a prototypical system (cPAD) that uses this representation, which implem ents the collaboration paradigm by supporting these activities. (C) 2001 El sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.