Engineering design to manufacture through a virtual environment

Using a concurrent engineering design philosophy, the paper describes a means by which multimedia systems may be employed to assist in experiential learning of the engineering design process. The system employs knowledge bases to emulate experts acting as virtual team members who assist in making the decisions necessary to arrive at a design solution that satisfies a user-established product design specification. The manufacture of the proposed design is carried out in a virtual workshop and the resulting product is tested in a working environment. Feedback on the final design and on the resulting manufactured product is provided through a simulated race where users are able to compete with peer-derived solutions.