A mixed reality environment for collaborative product design and development

This paper presents a mixed reality (MR) environment for collaborative product design and development. This MR collaborative environment is based on a client/server architecture where multiple users can create and modify product features in a 3D physical space simultaneously. A tri-layer model representation scheme is designed to facilitate product creation and visualization. Intuitive feature manipulation methods and grid-and-snap modes have been designed to support solid modelling in the MR environment. Bi-directional communication between the MR environment and the CAD system ensures any modifications made by one user are propagated to the views of other users for maintaining design data consistency.