CADOM: A Component Agent-based Design-Oriented Model for Collaborative Design

Information technology is the foundation for collaborative design. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the current research on product modeling, and a schema for a Design-Oriented Model (DOM) containing functional, structural and management data is proposed. The functional data explains the design purpose, function, object behavior and design rationale; the management data is for keeping the consistency of the model data, capturing the evolution process and controlling the operation action and authority; the structural data is the core of the model data. The integration of functional and management data directs the model towards design integration in place of application integration. The modeling system adopts the Component Agent (CA) mechanism that represents a complex product in an intelligent, autonomous hierarchy. A CA encapsulates the DOM data and consists of a definer, a communicator, an adaptor and a manager. These units are responsible for defining the model data, interacting with other agents, deriving special data and managing the constraints, version, authority and operation. Finally, several aspect supporting the collaborative design enabled by the CADOM (CA-based DOM) are discussed, as the multi-views model, the semantics communication between perspectives, the dynamic constraints management, the version and authority management, and the product and process integration. The discussion indicate that the model is an information infrastructure with more capabilities for collaborative design.