Software architecture to facilitate automated message recording and context annotation

SoftwarearchitecturetofacilitateautomatedmessagerecordingandcontextannotationDavid T.McWherterVera ZaychikErikE.HayesWilliam C.RegliJonathan SevyGeometric and Intelligent Computing Lab oratoryDepartment of Mathematics andComputer ScienceDrexelUniversity3141 ChestnutStreet,Philadelphia, PA19104http://gicl.mcs.drexel.eduABSTRACTThe complexities of pro duct engineering frequently require teams of agents, b oth human and digital, working togetherto take a pro duct through its life-cycle.Increasingly, manufacturers, designers and pro ject planners b elong to di erentdesign teams, in di erent corp orate organizations in a supply network, separated by large geographic distances.This pap er describ es the software architecture of the Collab orative Design Studio environmentwe are developingto supp ort Networked Engineering.Weprovide the framework enabling communications exchanged during designand manufacturing activities to b e annotated with design context information and archived for future reference.Wepresent an XML-basedmessagemodelto encapsulate relationships b etweendesign context and designers' commu-nications.As a pro of-of-concept, are creating a Networked Engineering Environment with integrated email, instantmessaging, collab orativework, text-editing and CAD/CAM packages.Our architecture provides a wide range of b ene tsfor network-based engineering.Transmitting design contextwith informal communications establishes frames of reference among designers.Recording informal communicationsaids searching and analyzing the contents of Design Rep ositories that archive a pro duct's life-cycle, do cumenting therationale b ehind decisions.Additionally, data-mining techniques can b e applied to the communications network inthe Rep ository to analyze agentinteractions|working toward case-based indexing of the design pro cess.Keywords:Networked Engineering, Design Rationale, Knowledge Capture, Informal Media, XML.1.INTRODUCTIONIt has long b een established that engineering design is a pro cess that involves collab oration, oer distance and time,among many p eople, who often havevery di erent roles and goals.1{3As a design evolves, a great deal of knowledgeandinformationispro duced.Onlyasmallportionoftherelatingtodesigncanbefoundindirect pro ducts of the design e ort|the CAD, physical mo dels, or standard do cumentation.Design Rationale, themotivations, diculties, and failures encountered during the design typically remain undo cumented, despite the factthat it is essential for future mo di cations of a pro duct and the development of new pro ducts.In this pap er we describ e the software architecture for a Collab orative Design Studio for Netorked Engineering.This environment facilitates the capture of Design Rationale and the construction of Design Knowledge Rep ositories.Primarily,we concentrate on the archival of electronic communications and the asso ciation of the designer's contextwith these communications.The remainder of this pap er will fo cus on three ma jor comp onents of this architecture:Further author information:David McWherter:E-mail:udmcwher@mcs.drexel.eduVera Zaychik:E-mail:uvzahi@mcs.drexel.eduErikE.Hayes E-mail:uehaes@mcs.drexel.eduWilliam C. Wregli:E-mail:wregli@mcs.drexel.eduJonathan Sevy:E-mail:jsevy@mcs.drexel.edu