Abstract
In engineering design environment it is hard to link design data and systems because the types of them are disparate. Therefore, the importance of metadata has increased. Some researches have been executed to develop metadata. But they cannot interact with other metadata and are difficult to extend. The purpose of this paper is to develop a common document structure which represents the general information of mechanical part assembly using XML, and to use it as base documents in order to integrate design data and systems. It is composed of part, assembly and user documents. Part document represents the information of a part independently to part type. Assembly document represents the location of constituent part documents. User document represents user's information. Common documents can be used as a broker between design data and systems, and it can improve the interpretability and reusability of document. We applied the developed common document structure to 2-stage spur gear drive.