Research on Web-based Collaborative Assembly System and Its Related Key Technologies

One of the research focuses currently in Design for Assembly (DFA) category is to achieve the product parts pre-assembly across various CAD platforms and different geographical locations by taking advantage of web-resources, to validate the assemblability of parts and subassemblies rapidly, and to carry out collaborative planning for product assembly. Regarding the VRML language as the carrier of product model, a new collaborative assembly prototype system is developed by VC++ language with Cortona API according to standard 3-level mode of web architecture. The key technologies used in the collaborative assembly prototype system, such as a generalized collaborative assembly modeling concept, the method of coding subassemblies tasks, the construction principle of evaluative index for the cooperative members and a special collaborative assembly protocol, are discussed in detail. At last, an instance with a small satellite assembly planning is presented.