Towards a Feature-Based and Fine-Grain Product Repository for Heterogeneous Computer-Aided Systems

Abstract

Sharing and integrating product and process information among different computer aided applications is inevitable to follow the pace of industrial competition. Heterogeneous representations of data and knowledge utilized among different applications are major barriers to achieve engineering information system integration. This paper introduces a concept of a feature based product repository where database table schemas have been designed based on a neutral format scheme and uses unified features to maintain consistent relationship with parts’ application specific features. The repository is designed to store nongeometric engineering information in addition to traditional geometric information. This paper contributes to the framework design of the proposed neutral repository system and the significance is that the neutral data structures and the fine-grain information modeling method help overcome the bottleneck interoperability problem of engineering systems.