Customized encryption of CAD models for cloud-enabled collaborative Product development

Collaborative product development via cloud has changed the information distribution, organization and management means of traditional product design. Under this new paradigm, product information needs to be shared flexibly to meet collaborators’ requirements. Feature-based Computer Aided Design (CAD) models contain abundant intellectual property information. It is paramount to maintain the security of the sensitive information in CAD models while sharing other information of the models in cloud for effective collaboration. The developed security research works for CAD models are still far away from meeting collaboration requirements. In this chapter, an innovative customized encryption approach to support product development collaboration is presented. The approach is composed of a customized encryption algorithm for feature-based CAD models, a key based authorization algorithm for users to decrypt shared features in the models, and a customized geometric transformation algorithm for effective protection mode-based visualization of the models during collaboration. By using this approach, CAD models can be flexibly encrypted to realize the customized sharing of features used for collaboration and protection of other features of the models according to collaboration requirements. A complex case study has been used to verify and illustrate the effectiveness of the approach to industrial applications.