Exploration of a Multi-User Collaborative Assembly Environment on the Internet: A Case Study

Abstract

Abstract Real-time collaboration systems, in which participants share product data and applications in real time, have been a subject of interest for many years. Nowadays, a rapid development of Internet-based technologies with steadily increasing easiness in accessing any kind of information through the World Wide Web (WWW) would offer the possibility of developing a real-time collaborative system over the Internet. Two strategies are required to create such a system. One strategy is finding effective methods for communicating and sharing distributed product information, especially those related to design and manufacturing. Another strategy is developing Web-based approaches that support real-time sharing of platform-independent applications. In this paper, a concept for a multi-user collaborative assembly environment on the Internet is presented. The Client/Server structure of the environment, and the four main functional modules including: 1) integration and sharing of distributed product data through a STEP server; 2) session management including team management, user management and access control; 3) sharing of multimedia data (e.g. text, audio and video); 4) 3D collaborative assembly, are described. Finally, a scenario has been designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the environment to support distributed collaborative assembly design.