The Case for Design Using the World Wide Web

Most information and services required today by designers will soon become available as documents distributed in a wide area hypermedia network. New integration services are required from the design environment, supporting business transactions with design information providers, automatic exchange of design data between independent groups, and integrated support for new forms of collaboration. We discuss design using electronic commerce and other services based on the Internet, and propose a hypermedia system organization for a new generation of CAD systems, conceived to make efficient use of that infrastructure. We also describe our experience as designers of an integrated design and documentation system that interfaces existing design and documentation tools with electronic commerce services based on the World Wide Web.