A Cooperative Multi-Agent-Based Plant Design System

This paper presents a cooperative multi-agent-based plant design system whose architecture is a client/server structure. In the proposed system, we customize the specific planning for each of agents, so they can coordinate with each other efficiently to resolve both the engineering conflicts and the cooperative conflicts, and we also set up coordination-mechanism of each agent to guarantee him coordinating effectively. Moreover, we present two new strategies. One is a display strategy in the client that enables designer to see all models in his view port with high update speed; the other is a conflict detection and solution strategy that can complete the real-time conflict detection. To manage metadata efficiently, the proposed system adopts the Berkeley DB or Berkeley DB XML to store engineering information and topological information. The approach presented provides the system with an excellent human-computer interaction, and enables multidisciplinary designers to cooperate efficiently