Abstract
A product is designed through the collaboration among engineers in several fields such as design, analysis, and manufacturing. These series of functions are performed repeatedly during the design process. An easy access and exchange of the model data is one of the important elements that help to shorten production development time. Especially, the importance of data exchange between CAD and CAE applications is increasing in the field of verification and estimation of the products. However, information and knowledge of model which is generated by a CAD software cannot be transferred by a function of CAE software, as an exchange of product data between CAD and CAE applications. It causes a delay in design analysis and eventually discourages a designer's effort in improving his design. Therefore, we need to integrate a commercial CAD and CAE applications effectively and to use the same interface on a product model obtained in a distributed environment. This paper shows how to implement a model exchange between CAD and CAE by a web-service and how to provide a communication environment among engineers.