Research On A Conferencing System For Product Cooperative Design

In the background of economic globalization, the manufacture industry is facing very intense competition. Three challenges exist for manufacturing enterprises: (1) industrial products are becoming more complex, with the result that the risks and uncertainty are rising all the time; (2) the average time allowed for product research and design is limited and much less than before; (3) the culture, society and environment are influencing the product design. To get around all these new challenges, it is very necessary to apply more advanced technology to the research and design process of products.As for the product design, it is related to many research fields and requires that design experts from all backgrounds cooperate in a seamless manner. The traditional serial way of product design is not suitable any more for complex design tasks. In this situation, the advent of Computer Supported Cooperative Design (CSCD) can solve the problem. CSCD can use distributed resources conveniently, and allow many design experts working in a collaborative way.In the last years, desktop video conferencing systems have had broad applications in various backgrounds. Also, this type of conferencing system is very suitable to develop further many computer software systems or incorporate other systems, in the fields of remote learning, remote monitoring, remote medicine, group decision making, model exhibit and discussion, etc. Desktop video conferencing systems have basic distributed application framework, conference management and user management, and various cooperative communication tools (text chatting, audio/video chatting, etc). These are necessary for a conferencing system for product cooperative design. So, the basis of the implementation of the conferencing system for product cooperative design is to incorporate a desktop video conferencing system and a CAD modeling and rendering engine.To better support the product cooperative design process, the paper discusses the role-based user management and uses it in the system; the design project management is also added to the system; cooperative communication tools are modified to aid the cooperative design.In addition, the paper shows some research work about the application of CSCD in complex product design. In concurrent conflict handling, it proposes a taxonomy of conflicts existing in our system. This taxonomy classifies conflicts into three levels: design decision conflicts, collaborative option conflicts and CAD model collisions. A series of resolutions is then presented to resolve these types of conflicts.Based on these work, a prototype CSCD system, named CoDesigner, is then developed, based on the open-source video conferencing system Dimdim and the Hoops toolkit. The system supports multiple-user product cooperative design in Internet/Intranet, in the synchronous and asynchronous model. This system is easy to deploy in terms of hardware investment and software upgrading. In product cooperative design support, the system provides convenient user management and project management; multi-model cooperative communication tools are utilized to aid the cooperative design; integrated conflict handling can deal with cooperative conflicts from difference levels. Experiments shows that the system is well organized and can conduct efficient management of the design process, and help to reduce the product design cycle.