A hierarchical method for coupling analysis of design services in distributed collaborative design environment

Abstract

Design is a kind of highly complex activities with a large number of coupling relationships existing among essential design factors and design resources. This paper investigates the approach and mechanism of distributed design resources integration and binding in collaborative design process based on service-oriented architecture. A SORCER-based collaborative design environment is presented. An essential design factors matrix is designed as the binding mechanism to drive distributed design resources integration process during the design tasks execution time. Then, a coupling analysis method for design service modelling and execution is proposed. In order to build a multi-resolution coupling model in the local and global size, an essential design factors binding matrix and an essential design factors matrix group are adopted to express the internal relationships between design services. A hybrid approach, based on the partitioning operation, clustering operation and the genetic algorithm, are used to solve the coupling sets for global essential design factors.