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The issue of interoperability in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry represents a challenge on a scale that spans across the project life cycle. This is predominant in the infrastructure sector that usually comprises a more versatile Operations and Maintenance (O&M) phase in comparison with the buildings sector. To this end, an important stage in the information life cycle is the asset information capture and validation during product procurement at the O&M phase. The water industry in the United Kingdom relies on Product Data Templates (PDTs) to fulfil such task, which is usually an error prone manual process. This paper presents an ongoing research, which investigates the application of Semantic Web Technologies (SWT) for improving product data exchange during product procurement at the O&M phase for the water industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Therefore, focus group sessions with industry experts were held to discuss current inefficiencies and solution requirements. Based on these results, a semantic common model named Asset Specification Ontology (ASO) was developed to capture and validate asset information during product procurement at the O&M phase. The common model (ontology) is based on available technologies, namely Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL). This gives the advantage of semantically rich data which can be linked and queried in a meaningful way to facilitate the exchange and validation of water industry assets' data. The uniqueness of this paper is manifested in the issue it tackles, as efficient product procurement, and hence, data exchange in the water industry is an industrial challenge that is seldom researched. Results from the focus group sessions showed that information exchange within the UK water industry is impeded due to the lack of structured and semantic data. However, for a robust semantic interoperability, there needs to be a robust semantic data infrastructure, which would require semantic mappings from standards to product properties, from standards to other standards, and from standards to dictionaries. These conclusions were further supported by the common model, which was created from existing schemas, standards, and dictionaries. Generally, this paper recommends a common model/product library for phase-specific product data exchange in the water industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new design and manufacture paradigm, Cloud-Based Collaborative Design (CBCD) has motivated designers to outsource their product data and design computation onto the cloud service. Despite non-negligible benefits of CBCD, there are potential security threats for the outsourced product data, such as intellectual property, design intentions and private identity, which has become an interest point. This paper presents a novel secure product data exchange (PDE) in the processes of CBCD. Different from general cloud security mechanism, our method is content-based. We first show an outline of the collaborative scenario to describe the architecture of the proposed secure CBCD, in which a security mechanism is combined with the data exchange service to achieve secure PDE. Second, we present a novel grid-based geometric deformation method for the security mechanism with three processes: the original shapes of a source Computer Aided Design (CAD) model can be hidden by deforming the control grid; then the deformed grid can be exchanged to target system where a deformed target CAD model can be reconstructed; at last, the deformed target CAD model can be recovered to the original shape after recovering the deformed grid. Finally, typical CAD model tests demonstrate that our method can keep the sensitive information of source model and also maintain the same level of data exchange error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's increasingly competitive environment, firms are experiencing growing pressure to reduce the product development lead time to meet market expectations. In this paper, a Responsive Product Development System (RPDS), which is used to model the product development process and the components of the process with object technology, introduces a dynamic product information schema characterized by its ability to provide design practitioners with a product data exchange standard, thus transforming data to information and then knowledge. To validate the feasibility of the proposed schema, a case study has been conducted in a plastic product factory based on the suggested approach. Following feedback from these companies, a further review of the design of the proposed system has been conducted to ensure efficient information flow across the heterogeneous computing environment. A measure of loss to society associated with RPDS in product development time is also included as a system evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing trend toward product development in a collaborative environment has resulted in the use of various software tools to enhance the product design. This requires a meaningful representation and exchange of product data semantics across different application domains. This paper proposes an ontology-based framework to enable such semantic interoperability. A standards-based approach is used to develop a Product Semantic Representation Language (PSRL). Formal description logic (DAML + OIL) is used to encode the PSRL. Mathematical logic and corresponding reasoning is used to determine semantic equivalences between an application ontology and the PSRL. The semantic equivalence matrix enables resolution of ambiguities created due to differences in syntaxes and meanings associated with terminologies in different application domains. Successful semantic interoperability will form the basis of seamless communication and thereby enable better integration of product development systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product data exchange and sharing is an important issue for miscellaneous information systems. STEP-based product data exchange and sharing provides a useful mechanism for implementing concurrent engineering and promoting the realization of CALS' en vironment. This paper implements a pilot system for STEP-based PDE (Product Data Exchange) system based on the requirement of product data exchange between and within enterprises. The system incorporates engineering information in the design and manufactur ing stages and guarantees the consistency of the product data exchange and sharing. Complete development processes of systems, in cluding AAM (Application Activity Model), ARM (Application Reference Model), and AIM (Application Interpretation Model), are illustrated herein. AAM utilizing BPR (Business Process Reengineering) approach is employed to develop ARM, which is then mapped to AIM mod els from part 41, part 42, part 44, AP 203, AP 214 in STEP The system's database is based on the integrated AIM models in STEP to as sure the capability for product data exchange and sharing. The kernel data structure is a combination of engineering information and product-oriented definitions. The data from miscellaneous information systems, such as CAD/CAM, MRP/MRPII, ERP, and PDM, in the de sign and manufacturing phase of a product's life cycle can be exchanged using this system. This paper also employs STEP to present an integrated product-oriented data structure to manage engineering information from different information systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A fundamental issue in concurrent engineering is sharing data among a vanety of commercially available computer-aided de sign, analysis, and manufacturing software tools. Geometry flaws often occur in the exchange of design data between dissimilar CAD systems and have multiplied with the ever-increasing complexity of product geometry. in recent years the international standard ISO 10303, STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product model data), has achieved a success rate of 95-98% in the exchange of design data. This paper demonstrates that a significant portion of these errors are the result of the different degrees of precision used by com mercial CAD systems and are often apparent as minute gaps ranging from 0.00001-0.1 mm. The consequences are micro geometry gaps that are not visible to the designer but influence the creation of the final geometry at the receiver's end. Research has found that these gaps can be directly linked to the incompatibility in the degrees of precision used by individual CAD systems to associate vertices and curves with related faces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The suitability of the Standard Data Access Interface (SDAI) as a basis for a collaborative modelling environment is evaluated through the development of a prototype implementation. Problems are reported and possible solutions suggested. A conclusion is formulated about the SDAI and recommendations concerning its future use are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]