This paper reports the development of a computer-based integrated engineering design environment which facilitates design decision-making by providing a medium for increased communication and cooperation amongst product development participants. A refinement and constraint propagation model for product development is used within a distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) architecture to support the cooperative design effort. Within such an environment, product and process designers can integrate the recommendations and expertise of all product development concerns as early as possible within the design-cycle. Our prototype system, ENVIED (Environment for Integrated Engineering Design), provides a domain-independent framework for human designers, artificial intelligence systems, and traditional software systems to cooperatively perform product and process design.
