Consistency Maintenance in Collaborative CAD Systems

The difference between real-time CSCW systems and traditional distributed systems is that the former one is supposed to provide a natural, free and fast interface for multi-user interaction. However, the typical multi-user interaction method applied in 3D CAD systems is strict consistency maintenance, such as locking mechanism and floor control, which may generate a stagnant and unnatural interface. This paper proposes a 3D semanticbased Operational transformation (OT) to support less constrained multi-user interaction and to achieve consistency in collaborative CAD editing (co-CAD) systems, and it can be used in many collaborative CAD/CAM industries.