The globalization of the markets, increasing complexity and diversification of products as well as product and process innovations as central factors of business competition have forced companies to create new strategies of product development. This paper points out the possibility of standardization in the modeling phase in consideration of calculation results and conceptual design activities. The introduced approach is based on user defined features (UDFs) as knowledge carrier, whereas these UDFs have full control over the model setup, initialized by a few input parameters. In consideration of company specific model properties, the augmentation of UDFs with knowledge provides all information required regarding the shape, function and manufacturing of the product for all phases of the product life cycle. By means of an exemplary realization of the illustrated concept this paper makes the approach accessible to the reader. Finally the paper will be concluded with prospects in future challenges of the automation of the product development process. © 2008 CAD Solutions, LLC.
