A Web-based collaborative design modeling environment

Abstract

The paper presents an open product development environment for distributed, collaborative, and integrated design. The Web based framework, called DOME, allows designers to build integrated models using both local and distributed resources, and to collaborate by exchanging services in a network centric environment. An integrated model can be created while each participant focuses on their own area of expertise. A design problem model is created by connecting modules, each of which can represent specific components, analysis capabilities/software, disciplines, or organizations relevant to the problem. The resulting module network forms a concurrent model in which changes propagate through service exchanges. A Java applet based user interface provides cross-platform and distributed user access to DOME module servers throughout the network.