Intelligent electronic mock-up for concurrent design

Abstract

As part of a European collaborative research project, which aims at identifying the advanced communications requirements to support concurrent engineering design, an Intelligent Mismatch Control System (IMCS) was developed to automatically identify mismatches of geometric nature during the integration phase of a distributed collaborative design process. The IMCS is acknowledge-based software module which uses a commercial CAD system (Parasolid), as the core geometric modeller, to detect any potential geometric irregularities in the design and suggest a modification proposal to modify them. The system was recently demonstrated across a European broadband telecommunications network which linked four sites: Aerospatiale-Cannes (France); ONERA-Paris (France); BT Labs (UK) and Cranfield University (UK). The IMCS was invoked remotely (from Paris) using a mullet-agent approach. The demonstration was attended by a wide cross-section of potential users from the European Aerospace industry, and initial feedbacks suggest that the IMCS was well received as a powerful tool that will have an important contribution to the success of distributed design using advanced communication systems.