In order to catch up with the steps of rapidly changing markets, the product development period of modern mechatronic products has to be as short as possible. However, mechatronic engineering is based on the interaction of mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and computer science. Therefore, inefficient communication between the engineers who come from different domains becomes a manifest obstruction for accelerating the design of mechatronic products. Nevertheless, innovations in the field of virtual prototyping offer some potential solutions to this problem. In this paper, we present a cooperative virtual prototyping system, which utilizes the concept of solution elements and virtual reality techniques to facilitate assembling and analyzing virtual mechatronic prototypes in a multi-disciplinary workgroup. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
