Research Of Feature-based Collaborative Design In Multidimensional Geometric Design Platform

As the secure and pervasive 3D CAD model sharing among all collaborative participants becomes vital to successful Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) applications, it is necessary to develop a system that can support the collaborative work of multi-disciplinary groups distributed in different places. During the years, numerous research work about the feature-based collaborative design have been done.However, from the viewpoint of maintaining the validity and consistency of product models, current feature technology still has severe shortcomings like complicated feature structures are not necessary for the conceptual design. To accommodate different requirements of design, the multidimensional geometric model becomes a new trend. Thus, it is necessary to integrate the feature-based collaborative design into the new platforms based on multidimensional geometric model.This dissertation first introduces the main trends and techniques in PLM and CAD design applications. Then the related research work to realize collaborative design and gives some definitions are discussed. Thirdly, a feature-based collaborative design system is studied and put forward and the advantages of a multidimensional geometric design platform are presented based on an existing CAD application platform:CATIA and also an important conception "Stable Name" that links the feature and geometric design is introduced. Finally, based deeply research in CATIA, we successfully implemented a prototype which integrates the feature-based collaborative design into the multidimensional geometric design platform.The implementation of this prototype makes two kinds of scenarios in the multidimensional geometric design platform becomes possible. One is several engineers working on the different parts (mechanical, shape and etc.) independently and exchange their ideas in 3D to make sure that the shape matches the mechanical part where in the end each designer has his own version of the product. The other one is several engineers working together on a certain part (eg. a plane wing) of the product and finally merge their work in a final result. This prototype makes the 3D collaborative design more flexible with higher efficiency.