Title: Synchronisation of heterogeneous design models of manufactured products by the formulation of business knowledge

Authors: Hanene Chettaoui, Frederic Noel

Addresses: INPG, UJF, CNRS, G-SCOP Laboratory, 46, av. Felix Viallet Grenoble, France. ' INPG, UJF, CNRS, G-SCOP Laboratory, 46, av. Felix Viallet Grenoble, France

Abstract: Product design development needs collaboration between different designers. A product is co-modelled by a team of designers at geographically distributed locations using a set of heterogeneous business tools such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) systems. However, existing collaborative environment support only a limited set of specific business tools. This paper presents an approach to enhance collaboration between experts using heterogeneous CAD/CAM models by the formulation of business knowledge throughout a Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) approach. An MDA-based solution is proposed to deal with the issues identified in developing such collaborative framework. We present a meta-modelling architecture to synchronise heterogeneous models whereby business models at different levels of abstraction can be synchronised. One issue is to measure the potential of such an approach in non-software engineering field. A case study is applied to Esprit™ CAM tool enabling Esprit™ to interoperate with the SolidWorks™ CAD tool throughout the Product Process Organisation (PPO) collaborative environment.

Keywords: collaborative design; CADCAM interoperability; business knowledge; model synchronisation; product modelling; MDA; model-driven architecture; data exchange; integrated design; design models; collaboration; product design; metamodelling; product process organisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2010.031939

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2010 Vol.37 No.3/4, pp.230 - 243

Published online: 03 Mar 2010 *

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