An Agent-based Method and Tool to add Collaborative Capabilities Based on Standalone CAD Systems for Grid Computing Environment

The importance of collaboration to typical grid computing applications is becoming widely recognized. This paper explores how to add collaborative capabilities to standalone CAD applications in grid computing environment. The method uses internal encapsulation and external encapsulation to wrapper legacy standalone CAD applications. The basic issues for collaborative applications, such as consistency maintenance, group awareness and data management, are discussed. The proposed method is implemented with case study of prototype tools to integrate both homogeneous and heterogeneous standalone CAD applications for collaborative applications.