Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3. CAD/CAM and PDM systems of each partner involved in the multisite PLM platform
Partners
Systems
CO
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
P7
P8
P9
INPRO
CAD/CAM
8
7
5
8
6
6
6
5
2
6
59
CATIA
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
9
ProEngineer
1
1
1
3
SolidWorks
1
1
1
1
1
5
Inventor
1
1
1
1
4
AutoCAD
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
8
SolidEdge
1
1
1
1
1
1
6
NX
1
1
1
1
4
Tecnomatix
1
1
1
3
DELMIA
1
1
1
3
Other
3
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
14
PDM
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
7
Teamcenter
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
7
in the European Research Area (see Figure 11).
Also, with the support of the videoconference
system the collaboration was possible.
The INPRO partners' PLM platforms archi-
tecture design has included a large diversity of
software. To illustrate the large variety of informa-
tion technology applications used in such context,
the list of CAD/CAM and PDM systems of each
partner involved in the PLM multisite platform
is shown in Table 3.
The most important problem that has to be
solved between partners was the compatibility of
the design format/representation because of the
existing of the different design software. Finally,
the Teamcenter Community software solution
was the option for harmonizing the design parts
delivered by the partners and that have conduct
to a final product.
In collaborative product development, partners
have to exchange their product data with other
partners in order to update their digital mock-up
(DMU). It represents an effective problem for data
exchange because each partner has to translate
other partner's data to the format of his own CAD
and PDM systems. A solution for this problem
has been presented in (Guyot et al, 2007). This
solution has been adapted for the PLM multisite
platform architecture design.
To translate the meta-data into common format
and send those to partners there have been built
an exchange architecture integrated to the new
PDM. The solution is to use a PDM interface that
extracts all the DMU's data in a storage files with
an internal format. This interface is the same for all
projects. After extraction, storage files are filter-
ing and translating into project's common format.
The use of a generic PDM interface limits
the application customizations for each project:
instead of extracting data with the translator of
each project, there has been build one interface
for all projects. Furthermore, data extraction in
internal format allows the project coordinator to
run other internal processing on DMU's. On the
other hand, the translation depends on common
format so that it cannot be the same development
for all projects. Now, the aim is to reduce develop-
ments between the different translation processes.
Figure 12 has shown the mechanism of data
exchange between partners in a collaborative
project. The aim of the new system is to use the
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