A concurrent engineering-oriented design database representation model

A concurrent engineering-oriented design database representation model (CE-DDRM) is introduced in this research for supporting various life-cycle aspects in concurrent design. In this model, concepts and behaviors of different design database modeling components, including entities, properties, relationships, tasks, and specifications, are defined at meta-class level. Design database is modeled at two different levels, class level and instance level, representing generic design libraries and special design cases, respectively. A Web-based system architecture is proposed to model distributed design database and allow team-members for different product development life-cycle aspects at different locations to access the design database. This newly introduced approach provides the foundation for developing the next generation CAD systems with concurrent engineering functions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.