Heterogeneous Collaborative Design in P2P-based Manufacturing Grid

Today, it has become more difficult for individual designer to fulfill the complicated design work due to the complexity of modern products. Moreover, an increasing trend toward product development in a collaborative environment has resulted in the involvement of multitudinous enterprises and the use of various software tools to enhance the product design. P2P-based manufacturing grid which combines the advantages of client-server model and pure P2P (Peer-to-Peer) model and avoids their shortcomings provides a supporting environment for heterogeneous collaborative design. And a semantics-based heterogeneous collaborative design methodology is proposed in the paper. Using semantics, product data exchange and modification for collaborative design of heterogeneous CAD systems is implemented. Based on above technologies, a prototype system named HCDGrid is developed. At last, a case study is further given to illustrate the effectiveness of the system. Key-Words: P2P; manufacturing grid; heterogeneous collaborative design; product data exchange