Supporting different stakeholder viewpoints across the product lifecycle requires semantic richness to represent product-related information and enable multiview engineering simulations. This paper proposes a multilevel product modeling framework enabling stakeholders to define product models and relate them to physical or simulated instances. The framework is defined within the Model-Driven Architecture using the multilevel (data, model, metamodel) approach. The data level represents real-world products, the model level describes models (product models) of real-world products, and the metamodel level describes models of the product models. The metamodel defined in this paper is specialized from a web ontology language enabling product designers to express the semantics of product models in an engineering-friendly way. The interactions between these three levels are described to show how each level in the framework is used in a product engineering context. A product design scenario and user interface for the product metamodel is provided for further understanding of the framework.

The Engineering Design Research Center (EDRC) promotes the establishment and dissemination of a scientific basis for design based on an interdisciplinary approach to researrh and education. The Center's vision is that a scientific framework for design can exploit rapid advances in computer and communications technologies to serve the competitive need for reduced product development cycles, improved quality and reliability, and lower cost. Basic notions of the product cycle underlie the Center's strategic plan, a framework of researrh thrusts leading from barriers in design science to goals and vision. As an NSF Engineering Research Center, EDRC conducts cross-educational and industrial programs in parallel with research