EDMS: an engineering data management system for design supporting environments

Abstract

As the popularity of design supporting environments and the large volume of data created during the design process have increased, how to effectively manage the engineering data has become an interesting as well as important research topic. In this paper, we present an object–oriented engineering data management system (EDMS) that not only has the advantages of an object–oriented data model, such as flexible incorporation of application–specific rules within each object, but also has the advantages of (1) being adaptable to existing design tools, and (2) supporting both top–down and bottom–up design paradigms. The first advantage saves re–investment in new design tools, while the second promotes the reusability of design data. In addition to the detailed description of the proposed data model, a computer system design example will be presented to illustrate the application of the EDMS. The implementation mechanisms arc also explored.