The modeling tools available for engineering design and analysis are traditionally created in isolation with features and capabilities geared toward a particular domain, that is, that many traditional engineering modeling tools are isolated, unable to readily connect to or be integrated into a larger tool set. With the advent of cloud computing and the success of delivering applications built using a microservices architecture, a more modern approach would allow an engineering design application to be composed of smaller independently developed and contributed applications within an environment capable of executing those applications without modification to the environment. This is somewhat analogous to an application store with one main difference. In the engineering design and analysis case, the goal is to enable the coupling of the applications together to perform higher level analysis, whereas in the application store, most applications are used independently.
This work introduces an Application Coupling Interface (ACI), for declaring the semantics of the application programming interfaces (APIs) of a modeled subsystem, a central repository providing access to curated web enabled engineered subsystems via ACIs and an extension of an existing cloud enabled engineering modeling/design environment to incorporate a new messaging system capable of autonomously orchestrating the execution and exchange of data between the subsystems. Together, these components provide the basis for an extensible analysis and design platform that accelerates discovery and innovation through the promotion of contribution and reuse of web enabled engineering models
