SBD System Design

Abstract

A simulation-based approach to concurrent engineering enables early consideration of downstream life cycle processes by supporting the development of virtual prototypes of products and processes and providing for their simulation and evaluation in synthetic environments representing the entire product life cycle To be effective, a system supporting such an approach must adopt a highly integrated view of concurrent engineering This includes the provision of rich, dynamically extensible product and process descriptions, availability of high-level computing environments facilitating assembly and invocation of design analysis tools and simulations, and an overall collaborative framework supporting distributed product design and development teams Each of these areas is being incorporated into the development of the Simulation-Based Design (SBD) Phase II system prototype The specific approach taken to the design of the SBD system was to define the essential capabilities of a domain independent concurrent engineering framework by focusing on fundamental engineering processes, which we consider to be applicable throughout the product life cycle In particular, we are focusing on supporting engineering design processes This reflects our view that many life cycle processes, such as manufacturing, maintenance, and damage control, can be considered as design problems in themselves A basic set of capabilities should thus provide support across the range of life cycle activities In this paper, we describe the components of a framework which supports these capabilities We use high-level software agents to provide broad-based support for the user in four main areas—product and process representation, collaboration and design process assembly and activation, visualization and interaction with product data, and integration of external applications Underlying support is provided for flexible communication among these components—this includes support for communication in a distributed heterogeneous computing environment, as well as higher-level knowledge-based communications among interacting agents

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