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An intensive knowledge engineering system is a large-scale knowledge framework that allows modeling and processing various types, different levels and multiple functionalities of knowledge in a process. The paper develops a knowledge intensive multi-agent system for cooperative/collaborative assembly modeling and process planning in a distributed design environment. In this paper, an AI protocol based knowledge intensive methodology is first developed for distributed collaborative design in facilitating concurrent integration and cooperation/collaboration of intelligent design agents. Then, unified class of knowledge intensive Petri nets is defined using an O-O knowledge-based Petri net approach and used an AI protocol for knowledge objects cooperation formalisms. Detailed cooperative/collaborative mechanisms and algorithms for handling integration and negotiation problems among intelligent agents are provided based on the knowledge objects cooperation formalisms. A research prototype system is implemented under the knowledge-intensive multi-agent framework with concurrent integration of multiple cooperative knowledge source and software tools/packages. Thus, assembly-oriented design could be carried out simultaneously and intelligently in distributed & integrated collaborative environment (DICE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]