A Web-based Collaborative System Of Distributed Drawing Documents For Construction Projects

Construction project involves multiple participants. The efficient collaboration among them significantly affects the progress and quality of the project. A specific system developed using world wide web technology can be expect to provide these participants a more effective information exchange platform. Participants can use the system to process engineering data such as documents, drawings, which significantly improve the efficiency of collaborative work. Some foreign manufacturers have developed this kind of large systems and had successful applications. But such systems have a very limited range of application in China because they can hardly satisfy the requirement of construction projects in China. For this reason, Tsinghua University developed a multi-part collaborative network platform system for construction projects called ePIMS+. But these systems are all centralized systems, thus the designer need to upload the drawing documents to the central server where system located to support collaboration based on drawing documents. It makes the designer difficult to protect the intellectual property of them. This issue directly affects the application of the system in collaboration based on drawing documents.This study focuses on the development of a distributed web-based collaborative system on drawing documents in construction projects which make it possible to save the drawing documents on designer server. It is able to control the browsing of drawing documents in order to protect its intellectual property rights according to a security mechanism while multiple participants were collaborating on the system. Based on detailed literature and field survey, this study analysis the application and the problem of current drawing systems, then the requirements on the system are indentified and summarized. After the analysis of information security technology, digital right management is determined to achieve the protection of designer's intellectual property rights. The study also designs the system's security mechanism considering the characteristic of collaboration based on drawing documents. Finally, the system was realized.In summary, the distributed web-based collaborative system on drawing documents can effectively protect the intellectual property of designer while multiple participants were doing collaboration such as distribution of the drawing documents, question and answer about the drawing documents, design order change and engineering negotiation. This study laid the foundation for better application of drawing system in construction project.