New architectures for next-generation of computeraided design environment need to be distributed and collaborative. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent collaborative design environment in which human designers and software agents interact with each other, exchange design information and keep track of state information to assist with collaborative design. The hierachical multi-agent system architecture offers a promising framework with their novel approaches for dynamically creating and managing design tasks in widely distributed and ever-changing design environments while the knowledge based design approach provide a foundation for supporting reusable design abilities. The collaborative design process involved in this environmezt is introduced in this paper.0-7803-7941-1/03/$17.0002003 IEEE. 348
Hierachical multi-agent system architectureMulti-agent design system is concerned with how a group of intelligent agents car, cooperate to jointly solve problems. Design is a complex knowledge discovery process in which information and knowledge of diverse sources are processed simultaneously by a team of designers involved in the life phases of a product. Complex design generally combines automated software components with human decision-makers, making it imperative to provide support for both hunian and computational participants in the design process [ 13.Recently, multi-agent systems have previously been applied in a number of engineering design applications.The approach in these multi-agent systems is to use agents to handle the pre-and post processing of various computational tools in order establish a common