Web-based collaboration work environment for furniture design

This paper analyses the needs and problems related with the exchange of data between collaborators in the furniture industry, and then proposes a Collaborative Work Environment (CWE) in order to meet these needs and solve these problems. The CWE is a platform that allows geographically dispersed team members to collaborate over the Internet to conduct the total furniture design process. Resources such as: design data, product simulation models, materials, marketing information, client’s requirements etc. are integrated into the CWE and shared with all the participants within the total furniture design process. In the construction of the infrastructure of the CWE, secondary development of CAD tools is used to control and modify parametrically the product sample models, as well as picking up the internal design data of the cad tools to store it into the external relational database to allow access to other participants. Multiple types of data stored in the database are structured in order to be easily accessible and searchable. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and its applications, are adopted as neutral file formats, thus allowing different CAD data to inter-translate in a convenient and safe manner. An example of this is Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG), which is used for 2D engineering drawings. Web services are the core technology which enables distributed and cross-platform resources to be shared as services. 3D models of furniture can be viewed and navigated in the integrated virtual environments based on Extensible 3D (X3D).