New collaboration tools applied to design teaching

Collaborative design is identified within a technological strategy whereby tools and services over the internet permit designers to work in collaboration in order to develop and manage all the operations involved in the development process and life cycle of products. At a university level, teaching the use of collaboration tools has on the one hand centered on informing about the potential of the network for sharing and managing information about students in design projects that are becoming increasingly more multi-disciplinary and on the other hand applying technology to the internal philosophy in the exchange of geometrical information and Computer Aided Design programme data. The need to define and improve knowledge about development stages in industrial products will permit assessing the use of more optimum collaboration tools and applications in each design process generically and to further knowledge about the possibilities these tools have in the scope of promotion and communication with end users.