A Novel Approach to Convert Single-user Applications into Collaborative Applications

Abstract

Collaborative support for a group of members that have common goals has been considered as a significant feature of the collaborative working environment. However, collaborative applications for multi-member generally lag behind in features with single-user applications. As a result, users often continue to use their favorite single-user applications that are less collaborative features. An efficient way is to convert single-user applications into collaborative applications. To our knowledge, there is no general technique available to convert single-user applications into multi-member collaborative applications. In this paper we give a novel approach to convert single-user, legacy CAD applications to collaborative CAD applications. The main characteristic of our approach is that it not only retains the original function of the single-user CAD application, but also supports the cooperative features. And it can improve the constructive efficiency of collaborative CAD applications.