DISTRIBUTED DESIGN - CURRENT APPROACHES AND EVOLUTION TENDENCIES: Designing with Internet

摘要

Design is a major industrial issue, where people from different expertise fields strongly need to co-operate to achieve a common goal. This paper proposes an analysis of existing research projects and applications in the domain of collaborative design, based on Internet technologies, in order to highlight the main trends in techniques, methods, and tools for Internet-supported collaborative work in design. After a historical reminder of tools dedicated to support design, and the emergence of specific environments dedicated to collaborative technical-product design over the Internet, we have a look at the current industrial design practices, and present an overview of some available commercial tools. This is followed by an analysis of the main trends of academic research projects, and we conclude with some ideas of future tendencies for collaborative design research.