Supporting Product Family Design in a3D CAD/PDM Integrated System

This paper addresses some key issues in supporting product family design in a 3 D CAD/ PDM integrated system and introduces the techniques developed or adopted in building the integrated system. The general architecture of a 3D CAD/PDM integrated system is organized as five tiers. Multi-agent technology is applied with a collaborative design environment. The rule-based product family architecture （ PFA ） and tabular layouts of article characteristics （TLAC） technique are applied to represent the knowledge for product families. They make the knowledge understandable, simplified and can be exchanged among heterogeneous information systems. A transparently concentric integrated mode is put forward to enable the heterogeneous processes to interact and communicate regardless of the language used to construct each process. With the mode, function calling and information exchanging among different processes are carried out via message translation/parse approach. Currently, the integrated system is implemented in the platform of Windows NT and 2000.

To gel or not to gel：A prior prediction of gelation in solvent mixtures

The gelation behaviours of low molecular weight gelators 1,3：2,5：4.6-tris（3,4-dichlorobenzylidene）-Dmannitol（G1） and 2,4-（3.4-dichlorobenzylidene）-N-（3-aminopropyl）-D-gluconamide（G2） in 34 solvents have been studied.We found that sample dissolved at low concentrations may become a gel or precipitate at higher concentrations.The Hansen solubility parameters（HSPs） and a Teas plot were employed to correlate the gelation behaviours with solvent properties,but with no success if the concentration of the tests was not maintained constant.Instead,on the basis of the gelation results obtained for the G1 and G2 in single solvents,we studied the gelation behaviours of G1 and G2 in23 solvent mixtures and found that the tendency of a gelator to form a gel in mixed solvents is strongly correlated with its gelation behaviours in good solvents.If the gelation occurs in a good solvent at higher concentrations,it will take place as well in a mixed solvent（the good solvent plus a poor solvent） at a certain volume ratio.In contrast,if the gelator forms a precipitate in a good solvent at higher concentrations,no gelation is to be observed in the mixed solvents.A gelation rule for mixed solvents is thus proposed,which may facilitate decision making with regard to solvent selection for gel formation in the solvent mixtures in practical applications.