Tangible Interfaces for Augmented Engineering Data Management

To maintain a competitive edge in global market, manufacturing enterprises must leverage their digital information assets, which include a tremendous amount of engineering data: CAD models, FEM analysis, tolerances, annotations, etc.. An emerging technology called Digital Master embeds all the engineering knowledge about a product into its CAD model. Tools and process to efficiently manage, distribute, and modify this information are essential. The digital master, which virtually eliminates the stacks of technical drawings, is not yet completely adopted in industrial practice, mainly because engineering software do not support at best all phases of the virtual product development process. At present time, Engineering Data Management (EDM) tools use standard desktop-based GUI, which demonstrated the following limits: scarce usability for not CAD professionals, low cooperation level, limited management for different expertises and low integration between real and virtual models.