Abstract
This paper concerns product data transmission in networked design collaboration using P2P (peer-to-peer) CAD streaming. A heuristics-based scheme is proposed to optimize the transmission efficiency among multiple users. It allows a collaborator to quickly acquire a meshed CAD model of some LOD (level of detail) by aggregating data fragments from the other collaborators, who possess different LODs. The requesting collaborator will be receiving the model incrementally from a coarse representation to a finer one through a sequence of LODs. The transmission tasks are scheduled with a multi-queue method so as to maximize the network utilization. A scenario of collaborative design demonstrates how the proposed scheme facilitates distribution of product data in consideration of complex collaboration relationships. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010.