CAD CAM technologies have had an immense impact on the product development process in the last two decades. Current technologies, however, have limited knowledge representation and computational capabilities to enable collaboration of design decisions beyond commercial Internet based collaboration tools. In the Phase 1 Lateral Eye proposes to develop a new framework for Knowledge Integrated computational tools for the capture, storage, retrieval and reuse of design knowledge among geographically and temporally distributed design teams. The proposed approach will be based on developing an ontological based product system. This will significantly reduce the number of iterations and redesigns that are common in a distributed design environment, potentially yielding a saving of over 100 - 200 million dollars for companies in the United States each year. COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: This research can lead to a new design knowledge and representation system for collaborative design environment. Further the Ontology builder may also have commercial applications in other engineering applications where complicated data and relationships have to be captured
