A framework for collaborative and distributed Web-based design

The increasing complexity and geographical separation of design data, tools and teams has created a need for a collaborative and distributed design environment. In this paper we present a framework that enables collaborative and distributed Web-based CAD, in which the designers can collaborate on a design and efficiently utilize existing design tools on the Internet. The framework includes a Java-based hierarchical collaborative schematic/block editor with interfaces to distributed Web tools and cell libraries, infrastructure to store and manipulate design objects, and protocols for tool communication, message passing and collaboration.