Collaborative Environment Development for the Supported CAD/CAM

Abstract

Collaborations abstract the interactions among a group of objects above the level of an individual object-oriented programming (OOP) message send for an integrated design/manufacture process, they can realize information share and system integration, and can be viewed as a type of systematic approach. This paper proposes the collaborative mode in the interior of an enterprise and among enterprises and a novel knowledge-based intensive CAD/CAM framework for collaborative environment development, which integrates product design, design for process planning, NC codes auto-generation and manufacturing simulation. A unified class of knowledge intensive data structures is defined using the blackboard and OO knowledge-based approach for handling both the design and the process planning problems. The detailed knowledge-intensive framework with integration of multi-cooperative knowledge sources and software is given. Thus, product design, process planning and NC codes auto-generation can be carried out simultaneously and collaboratively in an entirely computer-aided collaborative environment.