Research On Process-based Distributed Collaborative Conceptual Design System

This project is part of "A Process-based CAD Model and Prototype System" which is supported by National Natural Science Foundation(Grant No. 50075058, 2001-2003).The most import mission of enterprise innovation is product innovation and the key of product innovation is to create innovative product concept. The development of conceptual product includes demand analysis and conceptual design. During conceptual design process, many uncertainties give more chances to the creativity. But market demands and technical developments are difficult to catch, so conceptual design becomes more and more difficult. In order to get competitive conceptual product, it is necessary to collaborate with other designers from different fields and to get help from CAD. But existent CAD tools put emphasis on detailing design and lack supports for conceptual design.Based on research of conceptual design technology and collaborative design technology, this thesis presents a process-based model which can support distributed collaborative conceptual design. This model can support conceptual design which starts from demand analysis to conceptual product. It can support collaborative work of design group. It can support designers to generate, evaluate and select their innovative design concept. It can structure conceptual design data and knowledge.Based on design matrix - blackboard, the model is to provide a collaborative platform for designers. It focuses on activities of conceptual design process and logical relationship between them. It does not tell designers how to design but aidthem in conceptual design. It helps manage and optimize conceptual design process. It is to improve product quality, reduce product cost, shorten developing cycle and raise competitive position.According to the theory model, the author develops a software prototype system using Java to keep it independent of platform. Based on the structure of B/S, the system adopts object-orient programming method to design each function module. The system is to build the platform which does not place emphasis on 3D modeling but on supporting conceptual design process and achieving innovative product.The software prototype system has been built initially and verified the practicability of the theory model. By the system, designers can express their ideas with sketches, texts and pictures, can generate, evaluate, select the design idea, can keep conceptual design data, can query historical data, can share and reuse design data.At present, the prototype system is just completed in the main, so there is still much work to be done in the further development.