Nowadays personal users create a variety of multi-media contents and share them with others through various devices over the Internet since the concept of user created content (UCC) has been widely accepted as a new paradigm in today's multi-media market, which has broken the boundary of contents providers and consumers. This paradigm shift has also introduced a new business model that makes it possible for them to create their own multi-media contents for commercial purpose. This paper proposes a tangible virtual studio using augmented reality to author multi-media contents easily and intuitively for personal broadcasting and personal content generation. It provides a set of tangible interfaces and devices such as visual markers, cameras, movable and rotatable arms carrying cameras, and miniaturized set. They can offer an easy-to-use interface in an immersive environment and an easy switching mechanism between tangible environment and virtual environment. This paper also discusses how to remove inconsistency between real objects and virtual objects during the AR-enabled visualization with a context-adaptable tracking method. The context-adaptable tracking method not only adjusts the locations of invisible markers by interpolating the locations of existing reference markers, but also removes a jumping effect of movable virtual objects when their references are changed from one marker to another.

Today's manufacturing environment is becoming a distributed manufacturing process in which a unique and specialized technological background is required in specific domains rather than having a single company execute all the manufacturing processes. This phenomenon is especially true in the automotive industry, where the sharing of product data between companies is rampant; however, this kind of interoperability causes many problems. When each company has its own method of managing product data, the sharing of product data in a distributed environment is a major problem. A data translator module or a data mapping module had to be developed for the exchange of data in heterogeneous systems of product data management (PDM); moreover, this type of module must be continually changed and improved due to the fact that PDM systems change for many reasons. In addition, the growth in corporate partnerships deepens the burden of developing and maintaining this module and creates further data exchange problems due to the increasing complexity of the system. This paper introduces a way of exchanging product data among heterogeneous PDM systems through the use of OpenPDM, which is a kind of virtual data warehouse. The implementation of a PDM integrating system is also discussed with respect to the requirement for a logical integration of product data which are physically distributed.

Plant, civil engineering and construction equipment data of overseas construction are obtained and then analyzed, classified and integrated by experts. With those refined data set, we built classification system and defined property information with reference to international standard (ISO 15926, IRDL). If class in ISO 15926 is predefined for equipment of interest, we used the class as is. If not, we created and defined new classes on the basis of ISO 15926 classes. If there is similar class for equipment of interest, extension or inheritance methods were used. As a result, classification system of five levels and 637 classes were built and construction equipment information were expressed in open structure of XML such as tree structure of classification system and detailed information with number equipments for each specific equipment. We also developed the electronic catalog system which is basically equipment information management system providing various product search functions.

ISO 10303-112 is an integrated application resource of ISO 10303, commonly known as STEP, and specifies the procedural_sketch schema. The ISO 10303-112 provides general resources for the representation of modeling commands for the exchange of procedurally represented 2D CAD models. Procedural models have the advantage of being easy to edit, simply by changing values of parameters of their constructional operations. Such models are said to embody design intent, in the sense that modifications to them conform to the method of creation used by their original creator, and they also comply with any constraints implied by the particular constructional operations used. This paper introduces the development and standardization process of the ISO 10303-112, and describes the concept of procedural 2D CAD modeling, the way to represent the procedural 2D CAD models in STEP and the harmonization with other STEP resources.

The concept of integrated product information has been universalized so that many manufacturing industries have applied the concept to their production system. The field of PDM (Product Data Management), which is one of the core components of the integrated product information, is not an exception. Therefore, various PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software providers are in process of suggesting the PDM solutions. As the PDM solution is widely adopted in the manufacturing industries, the successful application of the solution has been gathering more strength in manipulation of the product information. However, the standardized implementation methodology is stuck in the basic level contrast with the enhanced PDM's functionality and capability. Present study refers to the application of UML (Unified Modeling Language), which is an object oriented modeling description, to PDM system development procedure. The advantage of UML is its efficiency and effectiveness in handling complex requirement often found in PDM implementation works. This paper shows the integration of PDM and UML proposes a philosophy for the support of requirement analysis throughout the full implementation of PDM system.

With the advancements of the Internet and CAD data translation techniques, more CAD models are transferred from a CAD system to another through the network and interoperability is getting a common word in the CAD industry. However, when a CAD model is translated for an incompatible system into a neutral format such as STEP or IGES, its precious feature information is lost. When this feature information is lost, the advantage of feature based modeling is not valid any longer, and modification for the model is purely dependent on geometric and topological manipulations. However, the capabilities of the existing methods to modify these feature-independent models are limited as the modification involves a topological change in the model. To address this issue, we present a volumetric method to modify the solid models in neutral format. First, this method selectively decomposes the solid model to separate the portion of interest called feature volume. Next, the designer modifies the feature volume without concerning a topological change. Finally, the feature volume is united with the original solid model to complete the modification process. The results of test cases are presented to attest the usefulness of the proposed method.

In order to survive worldwide competition, today's industries are experiencing strong pressure to introduce higher quality products with lower cost and shorter lead-time. Therefore, the role of design in the process of product development is increasing in significance. In this research, two methods for improving the design capability are proposed: construction of design environment and design automation using 3D CAD system. The designers and design process are the core of product design using 3D CAD system. In order to maximize the design performance, construction of the design environment including selection of a suitable system, designer training for best use of the system, establishment of an efficient design process, and stabilization of the environment are required. A method is suggested to construct design environment by systematizing the contents of the projects and consulting experiences carried out for various categories of business such as electronic devices, motorcycles, electricity parts, sanitary wares, injection molds, and die casing molds. Design automation helps reduce tedious and time-consuming jobs, simplify complicated and error-prone modeling and drawing works to shorten the lead time and improve the product quality. To develop a design automation system, understanding the process and the related knowledge on design are very important before implementing the system using API provided by 3D CAD system. In this research, an eight-step procedure is proposed for the development of a design automation system. These eight steps are analysis of needs, determination of specification, verification of specification using 3D CAD system, inspection of related API functions, programming, field test, application in practice, and maintenance. A case study in which five design automation systems in the design of turbine generators using the proposed method is introduced in detail. These systems play important roles in the generation of various output items including 3D models, drafts, material information, and NC data. The case study shows how effectively the design time is reduced and the quality improved using those systems.

This paper proposes an efficient algorithm for deriving inverse kinematics equation of 5-axis machine. Because the joint order and direction of 5-axis machine are different for each type of machine, each type of machine needs its own inverse kinematics equation for post-processing of NC data. Also derived inverse kinematics equation may cause problems of indeterminate and inconsistent solution. In order to resolve these problems, we have developed a generic method to derive direct kinematics equation by considering orthogonal joints of 5-axis machines. Using this method, we also have proposed a general algorithm for deriving inverse kinematics equation for various types of 5-axis machines.