A feature-based collaborative CAD system

With the intensification of the competition in manufacture, the distributed technology, whose aim is to promote product design process, has changed the traditional CAD serial design approach. But the distributed design systems also bring some new problems such as design conflict. To avoid this inconsistent situation, there must be some coordination mechanisms. At the same time, these mechanisms must not constrain the freedom of the designers too much to take their creativity away. This paper introduces a feature-based distributed CAD system to support this collaborative work. We analyze the reason of the design conflict. For addressing this conflict, we present feature-based concurrency operation model. In such model, the feature is the basic atom that can be locked and excluded from other designers using. Comparing with part level concurrency system, this mechanism doesn't limit the design flexibility too much.