A grid computing integrated distributed CAD system

Existing researches on distributive and collaborative CAD systems often focus on collaborative request submitting, but not distributive executing. Grid computing technology enables a collection of grid computers to gain super computation power; and moreover, Web Services is becoming an increasingly popular framework for accessing network applications. In this paper we present a novel architecture for a distributed CAD system - GridCAD, which is integrated with Web services-based grid computing technology. We introduce the main mechanism of server/client structure and survey the communications and data transferring between server and clients. The solutions for model validity maintenance and requests under collaborative environment also described. As the most important approach for decomposing complex operations and distributive performing, detailing of task manager - the core module of grid computing is discussed in detail. GridCAD, a prototype system based on Web services and grid services, guarantees interoperability on heterogeneous systems so that different types of systems can communicate smoothly and perform the computation much faster than on stand alone machine.