Composing and combining complex designs from different project perspectives

Abstract

A set of data manipulation and visualization tools is presented that act over engineering information from separate sources representing different perspectives on the same problem. The information is in the form of low-level transmitted data and enhanced data in the form of separate hierarchies that can be created independently by different (teams of) users or by enhancing the low-level, external data while maintaining the external relationship for the purpose of updating. The separation of hierarchies appeals to some fairly pragmatic technological or scien-tific principles from the domain in question. The POISE mechanism presented here provides a way in which these organizationally distinct, discipline-specific information hierarchies can be accessed when answering a query and visualized for browsing or editing purposes. The control over this system of intercommunication between separate perspectives is by a system of message delegation. Responsibility for responding to a message passes around a small society of active objects that can each contribute their own partial knowledge. This technique of allowing objects to offer part of the answer to one original query marks a considerable expansion of the features of a design or project database. The importance of a scheme of message delegation, such as the one implemented in POISE, is that concurrent engineering projects frequently need to work with well organized but partial information sources. Manufacturing, product, and materials information manipulated for engineering decision-making purposes is. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Ltd.