Interoperability in a heterogeneous environment for engineering design

This paper describes the communications component of a multidatabase environment for engineering design. The environment uses the STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Data) product model as a global conceptual view of data that exists within CAD tools. The meta data component stores information about the global view of the design and serves as an interface description repository. The communications component then uses the interface description repository to dynamically build operation calls. Interface and operation descriptions can easily be modified and new descriptions can be added to the environment at any time. The flexibility provided by this approach enhances interoperability among the tools of the environment and makes it easy to configure different sets of design tools.