Supporting design in an agent based collaborative environment

New architectures for next-generation of computer-aided design environment need to be distributed and collaborative. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent collaborative design environment in which human designers and software agents interact with each other, exchange design information and keep track of state information to assist with collaborative design. The hierachical multi-agent system architecture offers a promising framework with their novel approaches for dynamically creating and managing design tasks in widely distributed and ever-changing design environments while the knowledge based design approach provide a foundation for supporting reusable design abilities. The collaborative design process involved in this environment is introduced in this paper.