Collaborative engineering design based on an intelligent STEP database

Abstract

A pilot system has been developed to promote the collaborative engineering design on the Internet. Product models are stored in a shared database which is formatted according to the international standard STEP. The schema of the database is based on AP203 of STEP. Metadata and ontology concepts are used to improve the search capability of the product database. The system has been applied to a machining center example to verify its feasibility.