Lowering of product development time and costs combined with an increasing quality of the virtual and real product and its development processes leads to rising requirements during product development. The described computer based product development is a new approach to realize a continuous digital product development by integrating all CAx-systems and calculation/simulation programs that are used during product development. The computer based product development environment is based on an independent digital product model to administrate all product data. All processes during product development and all stages of product progress are digitally documented, too. The Usage of the developed computer based product development environment is demonstrated by the example of gear-units. Therefore a STEP-compatible product model for gear-units combines all product data of all design- and calculation programs. All process data during the product development of gear-units are digitally handled either. This leads to a proper documentation of the formation of a new product.
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