Abstract
Computer-aided concurrent product and process development involves activities that use design and manufacturing knowledge, data and computer-based tools to generate geometry of products and data for fabrication, inspection, and assembly. An environment capable of supporting computer-aided concurrent product and process development must be able to manipulate knowledge, data and geometry in an integrated fashion. This paper presents a systematic approach to capturing, analyzing, modeling and integrating knowledge, data and product geometry. Using this approach an object-oriented infrastructure is developed for implementation of a computer-aided concurrent net shape product and process development environment. The key elements of this infrastructure include a product model, a knowledge model, and a data model. All of them are represented in a common scheme-object and developed with object-oriented modeling techniques.