Collaboration design system using internet and virtual reality technology

Abstract

Globalization of manufacturing industry makes production bases covering two or more areas and countries. Moreover, in order to timely offer products which respond to consumer needs, it has been becoming important to shorten the lead time of product development. Opportunities to do collaboration work with designers/engineers existing different places are thus increasing. A support system for collaboration design work without physical moving of designers/engineers is strongly demanded to cut down time and cost. This research aims at proposing the intuitive 3-dimensional geometric model construction method and developing a system which supports collaboration design work for the discussion stage of ideas in the upstream of design processes. In this paper, a system which can intuitively build a 3D model and support collaboration design work for designers/engineers being different places by sharing mutually a design object through the Internet is described. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.