MObViews: a multiuser worksheet for a mechanical engineering environment

The paper presents an interactive tool, classified as a multiuser worksheet. The worksheet is integrated in a more general environment to support design and project in the domain of mechanical engineering. The worksheet serves two purposes: it supports flexible interaction with engineering data produced and consumed by components of a project support environment (geometric modeling, structural analysis, reliability analysis, etc.); and it supports multiuser interaction, allowing group activity and concurrency in the mechanical engineering design process. The design and implementation of the worksheet follows the object oriented approach and assumes the support if a shared window system. the paper describes the worksheet´s design and emphasizes the relations between the notions of hierarchy and public/private workspaces, as well as the control of the sharing and concurrency aspects of a multiuser interactive system