A formal approach to product model sharing, and practical applications

Product model sharing is a crucial technical factor in the integrated engineering process, where dissimilar computer-based tools interact with a common data model. Model sharing, and also genuine data transfer between design tools, is possible only under strict conditions. It is important to describe these conditions explicitly in order to predict and to test that transfer transactions proceed correctly. In this paper the conditions are formulated in terminology of the finite automaton. Although this formulation is general and abstract it can be specialized for any particular application, e.g. for a specific pair of communicating design tools. We demonstrate this with a practical case in the domain of geometric modeling. The formalism is also relevant for the process of semantic unification of different product models, which will be a central STEP activity.