CAD MECHANISM SIMULATIONS VIA WEB ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

In the current competitive market and in the context of the complex development of products, designers must work as collaborative teams, involving customers throughout the design process. The globalization of industry is reflected in the need for collaborative work at remote locations; the internet provides the technologies for the communication necessary for such work. Designers are no longer exchanging only geometry, but more information about design knowledge and design solutions. In this paper, a framework is proposed for sharing simulations, including not only geometry and structural aspects but also behavioural criteria. The use of Java applets and an external authoring interface has been found suitable for that propose. The usage of standard web-based technologies leads to easier, more effective and more general applications suitable for small and medium-size companies with limited resources in the field of interactive visualisation of research. The proposed framework allows the automatic transfer of
a mechanism defined by a CAD system into a web-based environment to investigate and evaluate solutions. The uniform application has been developed combining Java, XML and VRML on a Thin Client-Fat Server architecture. In order to avoid time-consuming virtual model preparation, product variety is defined in single XML file. The framework is an effective tool for engineering practice as well as for teaching and learning mechanism design and analysis.