by Mr. Jakob Vlietstra (USA)*
This article reports on the past, current and future activities of the IFIP Working Group on Computer-Aided Design (WG5.2) of the Technical Committee on Computer Applications in Technology (TC5). Over the years, the membership of WG5.2 has naturally grouped itself into three general interest areas, with each group organizing a series of workshops or working conferences (tracks).
1. The Geometric Modeling track began around 1984, with a small, informal workshop in the UK. No publications resulted from this activity of a handful of people. The first workshop that resulted in formal, published proceedings was the May 1986 workshop in Rensselaerville, NY, USA. Three additional Rensselaerville workshops followed, from 1988 to 1992, each with its proceedings published. Prof. Mike Wozny (USA) organized these workshops.
This series was the start of a biennial workshop track that continues to this day. The next in the series, organized by Prof. Fumihiko Kimura (J), will be held in December 1998 in Tokyo, Japan.
2. The Intelligent CAD workshops, originally organized by Prof. HiroYoshikawa (J) in the early 1980s, evolved into the present track on Knowledge-Intensive CAD. These workshops address the situation that current CAD systems do not explicitly incorporate product and design-process knowledge in design tools and design-object models. Between 1987 and 1989, WG5.2 organized a series of three workshops on "Intelligent CAD," which were followed by a working conference on the same subject in 1991.
To more fully address the above issue, a new series of workshops was begun in 1995. These workshops extended the concept of intelligent CAD to the concept of "knowledge-intensive engineering." The concept advocates the incorporation of intensive life-cycle-knowledge regarding products and design processes in the center of the CAD architecture. The concept focuses on the systematic use and sharing of knowledge across the life-cycle stages and organizational boundaries. The first workshop, held in Finland in 1995, focused on exploring the concept of knowledge-intensive design as a part of knowledge-intensive-engineering activities. The second workshop, held 1996 in the USA, examined architectures and methodologies for "knowledge-intensive CAD," based on the results of the first workshop. The third workshop on knowledge-intensive CAD will focus on prototype knowledge-intensive-engineering systems, experiences gained from their application, and future directions of research. It will be held 1– 4 December 1998 in Tokyo.
3. The third track is Formal Design Methods, organized under the leadership of Prof. John Gero (AUS). The purpose of this workshop series is to discuss and evaluate new formal design methods. The increasing availability and use of the Internet and the World-Wide Web has opened up the opportunity for designers to collaborate with each other in ways not possible previously. Designers can now work on the same design at different geographic locations, either synchronously or asynchronously. Computer-mediated collaboration requires a fresh look at the role of formal approaches to design and the place of CAD in the design process. This workshop series examines the formal aspects of collaborative CAD, with the goal of developing a better understanding of the impact of computer-mediated collaboration in CAD and of defining research directions for this area. The first workshop in this series was held in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1993, the second in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1995, and the third in 1997 in Sydney, Australia.
By means of strategic planning, WG5.2 plans to continue to identify new and emerging research topics in computer-based geometric modeling and design areas — perhaps extending to other, broader topics — and develop core memberships in those topics.
* TC5 correspondent to the Newsletter