The purpose of this research was to examine current methodology and design tools for concurrent engineering of complex systems. A prime objective of the work was to develop an integrated CAE system for concurrent engineering and to investigate performance issues, including: Design management, productivity, modelling and simulation. The main aspects that are important in achieving total design integration have been considered and extensively studied, including: System functionality requirements, design flow, system integration, applications design, and data management. An integrated design environment has been developed utilising open architecture, commercial CAD systems and databases. An extensive range of design tools have been developed which facilitate the process of design and design management. Issues relating to transfer of data across domains (or disciplines) are addressed specifically. A "netlist" generating systems has been designed to facilitate data transfer between domains and from design to simulation. Several techniques have been assessed and fully functional system developed utilising database extraction. A database was used to assist in many areas, in particular, the strong need for efficient design data management. Various tools have been designed and developed to ensure that integration between the different environments is achieved and also to accommodate the needs of profile interchange between tools. The development of these tools comprises three major parts. In part 1, methods of design reports generation are described. Part 2 concerned with the design and development of data update tools. Part 3 is concerned with data manipulation. Design examples are used to demonstrate the performance of these tools. The work on implementing the graphical user interface (GUI) has produced a large variety of design tools and utilities. This work describes the design and development of these tools and their applications to perform design, modelling and simulation. Evaluation and performance of the software have been demonstrated based on a coupled example of electro-mechanical design. A set of design issues involving graphics constructions of both 2D schematics and 3D modelling, design tool capabilities, and design simulation was considered and performed. The results of this work have produced many specific design tools. In a broader sense, the research has examined key issues of design management in concurrent engineering and drawn important conclusions
