Re-engineering the Engineering Change Management process for a drawing-less environment

Abstract

Currently, 3D models and 2D drawings are the main basic elements that together form and carry the product definition throughout the product lifecycle. With the advent of the Digital Product Definition trend, industries have been interested in adopting a Model-based Definition (MBD) approach that enables the integration of drawing annotations directly onto a 3D model, thereby minimizing the need to generate engineering drawings. This drawing-less environment requires a way to adequately carry the product definition throughout a product's lifecycle while supporting all of the downstream users’ specific needs. The objective of this article is to present a solution to carry the Engineering Change Management (ECM) process in a drawing-less environment. Therefore, based on ECM process requirements from two Canadian aerospace companies, we propose an MBD dataset which consists of an MBD model and a distribution file. The proposed MBD dataset is evaluated and the MBD-driven ECM process is outlined.