``TeamCAD: The First GVU/NIST Workshop on Collaborative Design''
Prof. Jarek Rossignac
Georgia Institute of Technology, Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
E-mail: jarek@cc.gatech.edu
URL: http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/people/faculty/jarek.rossignac/

TeamCAD, the first GVU Workshop on Collaborative Design, was sponsored by NIST, chaired by Jarek Rossignac, and hosted on May 12-13, 1997 by Georgia Tech's GVU Center in Atlanta. The workshop brought together an international team of experts in collaborative design and in mechanical and architectural CAD, including 50 faculty members from 23 universities and 18 industrial participants representing software vendors and users. The objectives of the workshop were to assess the state of the art in collaborative CAD (i.e., in the technologies and practices for computer enhanced collaborative design in mechanical, architectural, and construction applications), to identify key social and technological issues, and to provide opportunities for research collaborations in this area. Workshop presentations included 10 project overviews, 20 research papers describing new paradigms for designing and inspecting architectural and mechanical CAD models in collaborative environments and new software and database technologies that support shared models.

During the break-out sessions the participants were divided into 3 teams and were asked to investigate specific aspects of collaborative design:

1. Carlo Sequin chaired a broad discussion focussed on the teamwork practices and on the need for new collaboration tools.
2. Chandrejit Bajaj chaired the charge towards the identification of the research challenges in collaborative design and inspection.
3. Bill Regli chaired discussions on how does the Internet and standardization affect data sharing issues.

The workshop was focused on the following questions: What are the various forms of collaborative design? How do people perform collaborative design in traditional engineering environments? Why is Computer Assisted Collaborative Design important? How will it affect the work practices? What major research issues must be addressed before significant progress is made in this area?

The breadth and diversity of the attendees enabled the workshop to assess current technology and its limitations:

• Tools for collaborative design, and how good they are
• Use of the internet and what are the technology issues
• Data exchange standards, their reliability and cost

While most attendees were technologists, we wanted to determine the extent to which human issues and corporate practices impede or enhance collaborative CAD.

• Why aren't current technologies inadequate for the users?
• What must be changed in current industrial practices to enhance the positive impact of digital collaboration?
• What other issues are standing in the way of a successful deployment of this technology?

Lastly, and with an important eye toward the future, the workshop attendees have formulated additional requirements for a successful future research strategy in TeamCAD:

• Involve representation of users in defining research directions and validating the results
• Establish procedures for measuring the benefits of TeamCAD technologies
• Address the usability issues (barrier for non-experts)
• Define a comfortable paradigm for interdisciplinary research in TeamCAD

From the numerous discussions, a few points of agreement have emerged.

• TeamCAD environments span a wide spectrum of possible embodiments: from purely asynchronous text-based product data management tools, all the way to fully immersive 3D collaborative design environments, where virtual models of the product, the collaborators, and their annotations are available in a shared space. Progress in these areas is substantial. However, many of the fundamental problems in TeamCAD are not purely technological, but also cultural and influenced by current business practices. There is a great deal of speculation about ``what users want,'' but too little scientific data about real practices and expectations. Therefore, research in these technologies must be accompanied with empirical studies and formal evaluations. Yet, there is a clear lack of evaluation metrics for collaborative CAD. We must develop a common set of benchmark tasks and data and use them early and systematically to validate research results.
• Internet technologies are the essence of TeamCAD. Yet these technologies are progressing at a much faster rate than their exploitation by academics and industrial developers of CAD products. We must understand how to leverage object technologies and how to provide flexible security and higher-level data consistency checking on top of general purpose network and telecommunications technologies.
• Finally, little is available to TeamCAD developers to support true knowledge exchange techniques, such as design rationale, which greatly facilitate design reuse and maintenance.

The Workshop proceedings may be obtained by contacting the GVU center at (404) 894-4488.