Multi-Level modeling and access control for data sharing in collaborative design

This paper presents a method for securing collaborative design using multi-level modeling. When a team of designers works collaboratively on a 3D assembly model, a component of the assembly is presented in a full detail to those who have full access privileges to the component, but in an abstract level of detail to those who have less access privileges. Such various levels of detail can be created in two phases: volumetric feature removal which is achieved through interactive feature recognition on the CAD model, and multi-resolution mesh construction which is based on polygonal simplification. Appropriate representations of the assembly are extracted by direction of access matrix, and then presented to the users participating in collaborative design. The key issues in developing the secure collaborative design system are discussed, and the implementation results are reported. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.