LC-CAD: A CAD system for life cycle design

In product life cycle design, a designer should design both a product and its life cycle. Although CAD systems for product design are popular, there are no CAD systems for life cycle design. This paper proposes LC-CAD (Life Cycle-CAD) that represents a product and its life cycle in an integrated manner, manages consistency between these two models, and describes changes of a product along its life cycle (e.g., a component is shredded into fragments of metal in a recycling process). LC-CAD also evaluates environmental, economic, and other performance of designed life cycle using life cycle simulation.