A framework for collaborative top-down assembly design

This paper presents a system framework to support the collaborative top-down assembly design. As the first step, the framework is devised to enable distributed designers to conduct collaborative layout design, 3D skeleton design and detailed design of a product in a top-down manner in a distributed environment. To effectively support the collaborative top-down assembly design, a multi-resolution and distributed product assembly model is proposed as a product representation in the framework. With the help of the framework the designers could conduct those design activities of top-down assembly design that need plenty of collaboration such as the collaborative determination of assembly relationship and coupled structural parameters. A variation propagation mechanism is also developed to guarantee the consistency of the distributed assembly model. A preliminary system prototype based on replicated client-server architecture is implemented.