CyberCAD: a collaborative approach in 3D-CAD technology in a multimedia-supported environment

Three-dimensional Computer-Aided Design (3D-CAD) is considered as one of the most important technologies for the survival of modern enterprises. The increasing development of CAD features empowered by current Internet and Intranet development leads to the emergence of new collaborative CAD (COCAD) system. A COCAD system extends an existing single-location CAD system to a multi-location CAD application so that two or more geographically dispersed users can work together on a 3D-CAD geometry co-editing and CAD-related tasks dynamically and collaboratively. A proposed COCAD system named "CyberCAD" is developed on Java(TM) platform in this project to dynamically support large volumes of 3D-CAD data transmission. Over the last few years, computer-based videoconferencing has evolved to become one of today's most exciting multimedia application. Implementing videoconferencing technique, CyberCAD aims to establish a virtual synchronous collaborative design environment to overcome geographical constraints, shorten product development time and cost through the Internet. The design activities have been studied and implemented to enable effective and efficient collaborative design. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.