The International PROLAMAT Conference is an internationally well known event for demonstrating and evaluating activities and progress in the field of discrete manufacturing. Sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the PROLAMAT is traditionally held every three years and it includes the whole area of advanced software technology for Design and Manufacturing in Discrete Manufacturing. Past editions of the International PROLAMA T Conference have explored: -Manufacturing Technology, -Advances in CAD/CAM, -Software for Discrete Manufacturing, -Software for Manufacturing. The Eight International PROLAMAT held in 1992 (Tokyo), focused on the theme of Man in CIM. The 1995 PROLAMAT (Berlin), featured the theme of Life Cycle Modelling for Innovative Products and Processes. This past emphasis on human aspects and innovation provides a strong foundation for the next PROLAMAT. Under the title: The globalization of manufacturing in the digital communications era of the 21th century: innovation, agility and the virtual enterprise, the 1998 conference expands the PROLAMAT scope to include teams and virtual enterprises which come together across space and time to develop new products and bring them to global markets. Manufacturing issues and information models have long been part of concurrent engineering; they are increasingly important in new product innovation and in the development of manufacturing plans and processes which span multiple companies along with multiple time zones.

This text explores the developments in geometric and product modelling, and their applications. In particular, it looks at the means by which product geometry emerges from the conceptual stages of design, and the use of geometric reasoning for applications downstream of design, including manufacture and assembly. Much existing design research is either totally geometry based or totally non-geometric, and the interface between the two areas is of great interest to industry, as well as being crucial for the successful development of integrated systems for design and manufacture. This interface is currently not well understood and the book attempts to make a contribution to its understanding. The following areas are amongst those addressed: computer-aided design and manufacture of mechanical products; computer integration of design and manufacturing; computational geometry; conceptual design and engineering tolerances; and assembly design and planning.