A Synchronous Collaborative Environment for Engineering Design Education

A Web-based synchronous collaborative environment is presented, which facilitates the education of mechanical engineering design. With the system, participants at different physical locations gather online to discuss topics of interest. Members of the group can directly manipulate all entities in the engineering draft interactively on their browsers and updated results show on the partners' web pages synchronously. An entity-based access control mechanism resolves conflicts and maintains consistency of design data, so participants can co-operate efficiently. The system provides benefits for teachers as well as students. It runs in a self-developed Web-based CAD software environment.