A hybrid P2P-based architecture for collaborative engineering design

This work presents a hybrid peer-to-peer-based architecture for collaborative engineering design. Many current Internet-enabled environments for distributed engineering design have been proposed based on the centralized architecture. However, as complexity of design tasks increase, the centralized architecture has some potential drawbacks such as communicating bottlenecks and guarantee scalability. Therefore, we propose a hybrid peer-to-peer (P2P) network model, and describe a CSCW architecture using multi-agent techniques. Treating an agent as a peer in this study, we also describe its structure, the interaction between design agents, and implementation of a prototype system. A case study on collaborative layout design of satellite modules illustrates the proposed architecture