Collaboration and Application Integration: Distributed Design with Virtual CAD

The pervasiveness of computer networking and rapid progress in computer performance have made global cooperation of designers a real possibility. While these technologies provide the hardware infrastructure, software development is struggling to keep pace with these developments. There are many legacy applications and competing new developments, but unfortunately most of those operate on specific platforms in isolated environments. Cooperation of designers working on those systems is very difficult; a significant problem being that different data converter facilities are needed to exchange, interpret and combine designs components produced on different systems. The system presented in this paper aims at integrating different CAD systems and achieve true interoperability, where components designed in one system can be easily viewed, modified or integrated into other designs. The approach taken was creating an integration platform, and different CAD systems are integrated into a virtual CAD system in a seamless manner. The original CAD systems store objects designed locally on that system, while remote access is provided via an integration layer.