Using procedure recovery approach to exchange feature-based data among heterogeneous CAD systems

Data exchange is one of key issues in collaborative design. The purpose of feature-based data exchange is that the target model is editable after being exchanged. This is the reason why nowadays feature-based data exchanges become the research focus beyond the traditional geometry-based data exchange. This paper presents a two-stage mechanism to recover a complete modeling process of a parametric CAD mode in source systems. Therefore, what we exchange is the procedure of modeling steps. In target systems, we use the exchanged procedure to simulate a real human to reconstruct the parametric CAD mode in any heterogeneous CAD systems. The proposed method has been tested with case studies among typical CAD systems, such as SolidWorks, UG, Pro/E and Catia.