Data compression of shared product model in synchronous collaborative assembly

To solve the problem of big Computer Aided Design (CAD) sharing model in collaborative assembly, a method of model simplification was proposed. According to different roles played by designers, and whether their designed components would be assembled with components designed by others, the shared model was divided into detail representation and polygonized representation. The components, which had no relationship with collaborative assembly, were simplified to polygonized representation. Only the triangle facet information was recorded in polygonized representation, but no geometric object and feature information as in the detail representation, accordingly the size of shared model was reduced. In order to keep complete information of detail representation, the face edges and analytic geometry expressions were used to describe the face information. The new shape of detailed representation was reconstructed in the environment of Virtual Reality (VR) at client. The size of compressed model was only 1/7-1/6 of the original one.