A multiple-view CAD representation for product modelling

With the advent of concurrent engineering (CE), the engineering product design process has changed substantially. Different factors of the product life cycle, such as the manufacturing process, part assembly and quality control, can now all be simultaneously involved in the design phase. To achieve CE traditional computer-aided design systems are inadequate. Co-operative product design needs more powerful modelling techniques and geometric representation schemes than those offered by actual commercial CAD systems. A multiple-view CAD representation, called intermediate model, is presented. The intermediate model has been defined with the aim to upgrade a traditional CAD system to a feature-based modelling system which allows to represent different context dependent views of the product.