Reference model for CAD systems

CAD technology has already repeatedly penetrated the technical areas of industrial companies and does influence the conventional structure of development, design, planning and manufacturing. This grant positive economic effects which however are faced with a multitude of problems to which both, supplier and user are exposed. Today's CAD systems, as an indispensable part of a growing CIM environment, are still far from being integratable under a uniform data model for the description of products, equipment and processes. Therefore, the indicates difficulties require measures to create an order-supporting basis for present and future generations of CAD systems. A CAD Reference Model could help to compare different CAD systems, to find solutions which enable CAD systems to communicate with other CAD or engineering systems on different levels, to support development of existing and new CAD systems and to set up rules for international standardization. As a first step to a CAD Reference Mod el, a system architecture is presented in this paper which has been elaborated by expert group within computer aided design and engineering of the "Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI)".