The incremental editing of faceted models in an integrated design environment

摘要

Faceted/meshed models play an important role in product development cycle. Due to the fact that such models typically involve huge amounts of data, the exchanging of them in network-based integrated design environments (IDEs) is a critical issue. In this paper, an approach known as incremental editing is presented to expedite such a data exchange process through tracking changed portions of a faceted model after it has been edited at one application, transmitting these portions, and finally embedding them into the associated faceted model at another application. This new approach is expected to bring two benefits to current IDEs: (a) the editing of a faceted model at an application can be done without completely reconstructing all its underlying facets, and (b) the consistency between faceted models in different applications can be maintained without repeatedly transferring large amounts of facet data over computer networks.