MCAD to ECAD Integration (Dr. Schaefer)
Many products encompass mechanical as well as electrical engineering components. An example would be an elevator and its associated electrical control cabinet. In order to develop such products, usually the mechanical parts are designed first using a mechanical engineering CAD (MCAD) system. The electrical parts of the product are subsequently designed using an electrical engineering CAD (ECAD) system. Design changes on the mechanical engineering side lead to subsequent design modifications on the electrical engineering side and vice versa. Unfortunately, today there is no integration between MCAD and ECAD systems. The scope of this project is to develop a framework for bi-directional communication between mechanical and electrical engineering CAD systems. This involves developing a constraint-based approach that allows integrating MCAD and ECAD systems in order to automatically respond to design modifications on either side.