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. q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.