UPR Architecture:

In this section, we provide a very general description of a novel architecture for complete CAD data exchange, called the Universal Product Representation (UPR).

A Star Architecture

To ensure economic feasibility, we, like previous DE architectures, use a star architecture. Each CAD system interfaces with a central data repository through export and import modules. Unlike previous approaches, this does not mean that we enforce an identical data model on all participating systems.

Universal Support of Data Types

To address inherent functional incompatibilities, we take the exact opposite route to the 'least common denominator' approach of previous solutions: the UPR data structures are flexibly designed to support all possible data types; they can represent the union of the data types supported by CAD systems, not only their intersection.