Adaptive information processing in computer-aided product development

Abstract

The mechanical and electrical design aspects of mechatronic systems are highly intertwined through a substantial number of constraints existing between their components. A simple change in mechanical CAD may entail a redesign of several parts in electrical CAD and vice versa. Here, parametric constraints are used to model dependencies between the geometry of objects. In this situation, an active semantic network is used that provides support to an active, data-driven design process that controls parallel modifications in the shared database and keeps designers being informed when their work coincides with parallel work. The architecture allows different users or different function-groups and departments within a company to configure their own environment by modifying the information in the user/group model and to add additional filters for adaptive information processing.