COMPONENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a distributed design CAD system which makes it easy to design a large-scale assembly composed of many components and enables a user to easily proceed the designing of the assembly in distribution environment without being aware of the location of distributed information by distributing the management of many related component data. SOLUTION: A WS2 sends a component number to a WS1. The WS1 performs retrieval from a component constitution file 301 according to the component number as a key to obtain and send component constituted information to a WS2. The WS2 confirms the component constitution information and performs retrieval based upon a shape name and a physical path name as keys when the component shape information is present in a component shape file 202 connected to its own WS to obtain the component shape information. When the information is in a file on another WS, the shape name and the physical path name are sent to the WS. The WS having received them performs retrieval from a component shape file according to the shape name and physical path name as keys to obtain and send the component shape information to the WS2.