Collaborative Design Tool (in Java)
This project provides a simple graphical user interface for a multi-actor collaborative design study with surrogate parameter design tasks. It includes a manager application to control the advancement of tasks and a designer application to modify input variables and visualize output variables.
This project uses a Maven build file (pom.xml) to configure most external dependencies.
In addition, you must have an IEEE Std. 1516-2010 High Level Architecture (HLA) runtime infrastructure (RTI) to use this software. The included Maven configuration assumes you are using version 2.1.0 of the open source Portico RTI with the environment variable RTI_HOME set to the install path. The software has also been tested with the commercial Pitch pRTI implementation. You can specify the RTI implementation by editing the rtiName property in the configuration file config.properties.
Other configuration options in the config.properties file modify the path to the federation object model (FOM) file (default: collab.xml in project root) and the federation name (to allow more than one federation on one network, for example).
The main class DebugMain launches one manager GUI and three designer GUIs. It is suitable for local testing and debugging on one host.
Alternatively, launch independent clients using main classes ManagerMain and DesignerMain. Note the manager must be launched first to correctly register designers. The designer applications expect a command argument to identify the designer index (0-based). Note that Portico uses UDP multicast transmission which may be filtered or blocked on commercial or enterprise computer networks. Consider using a local area network or private wireless network to allow each client to communicate with the others.
Sample experiments are defined in the src/generator directory. Load an experiment from the manager application to start a design session.
During an experiment, the application writes log files to the default execution directory.
This project was funded, in part, by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship.
P.T. Grogan and O.L. de Weck (2016). "Collaboration and complexity: An experiment on the effect of multi-actor coupled design," Research in Engineering Design, vol. 27, pp. 221--235. doi: 10.1007/s00163-016-0214-7.
T. Alelyani, Y. Yang, and P.T. Grogan (2017). "Understanding designers' behaviors in parameter design activities," in 2017 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Cleveland, OH. doi: 10.115/DETC2017-68335.
P.T. Grogan (2018). "Data on multi-actor parameter design tasks by engineering students with variable problem size, coupling, and team size," Data in Brief, vol. 20, pp. 1079--1084. doi: 10.1017/dsj.2019.23.