An object-oriented approach for engineering design product modelling

Engineering design, as one of the most challenging application areas for Computer-Aided Engineering, requires the representation of complex data elements as well as complex relationships among them. Users in these environments have found traditional technology inadequate in terms of flexibility, modelling power and efficiency. Thus, it becomes necessary to develop environments capable of supporting the various paradigms used in large projects. Such environments require a good data and knowledge representation, efficient programing features, adequate mechanisms for storage and concurrency control and good communications with other software systems. In this paper, we discuss the main characteristics of the engineering design products and the limitations of the current design product models. And then, we present the main features of an improved object-oriented representation model PDM and its implementation MOSS. An example is given for demonstrating the application of the object-oriented representation model PDM and the object-oriented programming environment MOSS in the field of mechanical CAD.