Collaborative work in distributed environments using web technologies and programming languages for the improvement of design processes in virtual production systems CIOCA MARIUS 1 , CIOCA LUCIAN-IONEL 1 , BURAGA SABIN-CORNELIU 2 1 Faculty of Engineering, 2 Faculty of Computer Science 1 “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, 2 ”A.I. Cuza” University of Iasi Sibiu, B -dul Vicotriei, no 10. ROMANIA Abstract: - The collaborative work in distributed environments has a decisive role in the process of virtual product design in different CAD/CAM systems by successfully utilising web technologies and the programming environments, thus shortening the time needed for bringing new products on the market and the improving the transfer of knowledge between business partners. Key-Words: - Distributed environments, CAD/CAM, programming languages, web technologies 1 Introduction The article's purpose is the presentation of a virtual informatic environment that would ensure the improvement of the cooperation and of the operative communication between the members of a team formed, for a limited time period, for the realising of a high complexity project. More concretly, it targets the virtual product design by a team from the University and partners from the industry, on the one hand for the shortening of the time needed for realising the product and on the other hand for the knowledge exchange between pluridisciplinar teams (for a better connection between the higher education and the business environment from the area of Sibiu). Also, the promotion of ISO/STEP , standards is sought and encouraged, as well as their inclusion in new instruments as support for concurrent engineering. The application packages offered by the university are: ProENGINEER, Solid Edge, I- DEAS, Unigraphics, CATIA, AutoCAD, by means of the Centre for Research and Implementation of Numerical Methods (CCIMN), through a financing from the European Union of 40,000 EUR. CCIMN is the only centre in the Sibiu area acknowledged as Training Centre in the application packages Edge, Unigraphics and I-DEAS. 2 System architecture The architecture of the system for collaborative work takes into account: • the type of process interaction function of the time: synchronous or asynchronous; • the geographical dispersion of the virtual team's members: local or distant. 2.1 IT infrastructure Basically [3], a new (virtual) network is created over the interconnected networks. In this network formed of several computing systems, one is a server designated by consensus and put at the disposal by the university (fig. 1). The infrastructure allows the saving of drawings (via the STEP AP203/214 standard) [5], [6] in a joint database from which the team members can access these drawings (reverse conversion; from the STEP format in the native environment used) and process them further. The “guest” that has access to the realised models can visualise these drawings in VRL format. 3 Modelling languages For the process modelling, it has been opted for the UML language for following reasons [2], [7], [8]: • the offering of a simple and expressive visual modelling language; • extensible and specialised mechanisms, that allow the extension of basic concepts; • independence from programming languages and development processes/methods; • the offering of a formal base for the understanding of the modelling languages; • encouraging of the growth of the market for OO instruments; • the supporting of high level development concepts, such as cooperations, frameworks, configurations and components, the comprising of the best methods and techniques. 4th WSEAS Int. Conf. on COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, MAN-MACHINE SYSTEMS and CYBERNETICS Miami, Florida, USA, November 17-19, 2005 (pp105-108)