Abstract: Through analyzing problems of collaborative design for complex products and applications of high level architecture (HLA) in engineering collaborative design, a system architecture based on HLA for collaborative design is presented in order to implement interoperability, data consistency and concurrent operation in collaborative design. Design federate, management federate and monitoring federate with different authorities and functions are defined respectively. On the basis of system architecture, time management strategy and time advancing mechanism of each federate are given on the basis of time management service in HLA, and interoperability among federates and dynamic registration of design federates are realized to ensure data consistency and time stamp order of event by distinguishing operating commands and setting up event logic counters. Meanwhile, floor control is implemented by utilizing federate authority and ownership management service, thus avoiding concurrent operation. Finally, ship is taken as an example to give the concrete an application scheme of prototype system.

Key words: Collaborative design, Dynamic registration, Floor control, High level architecture, Time management