COLLABORATION PLATFORM

• US 20150373068A1
• Filed: 06/17/2015
• Published: 12/24/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Autodesk, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Autodesk, Inc.
• Inventors: Gordon, James Michael, Allen, Seth W., Sergeev, Boris A.
• Granted Patent: US 9,942,286 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/273 Asynchronous replication or reconciliation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/13 Architectural design, e.g. computer-aided architectural design [CAAD] related to design of buildings, bridges, landscapes, production plants or roads
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1069 Session establishment or de-establishment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4015 where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4046 with distributed floor control

Abstract

One or more embodiments of the invention provide a collaboration platform that permits multiple users to collaborate on multiple copies of a model simultaneously. The collaboration application provides a full set of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) tools for a client to manipulate a model and transmit the results of such manipulations to a server. Both the clients and the server maintain a history of the manipulations results. Once object changes are received by the server from one or more clients, the server distributes the object changes to the remaining clients. Thereafter, the clients modify their local version of the model in accordance with the object changes received from the server. The history maintained by the clients or the server may then be used to undo or redo any of the object changes, or to rebuild a model space in the event of a network failure.

Claims

1. A system for collaborating among computers, comprising:

a server computer coupled via a communications network to one or more client computers, wherein;

the server computer and the client computers each maintain a copy of a model comprised of a graphical design, wherein the graphical design is composed of two-dimensional (2D) and/or three-dimensional (3D) objects;

the server computer and the client computers each maintain a history of changes made to the model, wherein the history is comprised of one or more deltas containing only results of operations making modifications to the objects, but not the operations themselves;

at least one of the client computers transmits only the deltas to the server computer to update the copy of the model maintained by the server computer, in order to reflect changes made to the copy of the model maintained by the at least one of the client computers; and

the server computer accepts or rejects the transmitted deltas, updates the copy of the model and the history maintained by the server computer using only the accepted deltas, but not by replaying the operations making modifications to the objects, and then transmits only the accepted deltas to one or more others of the client computers to update the copy of the model maintained by the one or more others of the client computers, in order to reflect changes made to the copy of the model maintained by the server computer.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the history comprises an ordered sequence of the deltas.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the deltas comprises a list of the objects whose state was changed by one of the operations.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the results of the operations making modifications to the objects comprise one or more modified objects.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the results of the operations making modifications to the objects comprise a minimal set of changes sufficient for altering a previous state of the copy of the model maintained on the server computer to match a current state of the copy of the model maintained on the at least one of the client computers.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more others of the client computers update the copy of the model and the history maintained by the one or more others of the client computers using only the accepted deltas transmitted by the server computer, but not by replaying the operations making modifications to the objects.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the server computer and the client computers use the history of changes made to the model to undo or redo the operations making modifications made to the objects.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein, upon joining a session, the client computers are initialized by the server computer with a current state of the model by downloading the history from the server computer to the client computers.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the server computer accepts or rejects changes from the at least one of the client computers based on a delta ID associated with the object that was modified, such that a first change in time is accepted and one or more later changes in time are rejected.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the client computers resolves conflicting changes when the deltas are rejected by the server computer.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein unrelated changes to different objects are resolved automatically by updating object IDs of newly-created objects.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the deltas are self-sufficient in that they do not impose any requirements on the model as it exists for their successful application to the model.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the deltas have a set of pre-requisites for their application to the model.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the server computer determines a relationship between the deltas, and checks whether the deltas can be successfully applied to the copy of the model maintained by the server computer.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the objects are referenced by an object ID, and the server computer determines whether two or more of the changes affect the same object by finding an intersection between the object IDs.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the deltas are each assigned a monotonically increasing delta ID, so that comparing the delta IDs of two or more of the deltas establishes their order.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein a first one of the deltas received by the server computer is accepted and a later one or more of the deltas with a delta ID conflicting with a delta ID of the first one of the deltas is rejected.

18. The system of claim 14 wherein the server computer establishes the relationship between the deltas based on object IDs of the objects contained within the deltas, such that:

the relationship between the deltas is unrelated when the deltas contain no common object IDs, and the deltas are accepted;

the relationship between the deltas is reconcilable when a later one of the deltas includes one or more new objects whose object IDs conflict with object IDs of one or more existing objects created by an earlier one of the deltas, the object IDs of the one or more new objects are incremented to avoid the conflict, and the deltas are accepted; and

the relationship between the deltas is incompatible when a later one of the deltas modifies one or more of the objects that were deleted or modified in an earlier one of the deltas, and the later one of the deltas is rejected.

19. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the client computers serializes the deltas before the deltas are transmitted to the server computer.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein:

after transmitting a first one of the deltas, the at least one of the client computers waits for feedback from the server computer, such that;

when the feedback indicates that the first one of the deltas was accepted, the at least one of the client computers sends a subsequent one of the deltas; and

when the feedback indicates that the first one of the deltas was rejected, the at least one of the client computers waits for deltas from the one or more others of the client computers to be received from the server computer, and then inserts the deltas from the one or more other of the client computers into the history maintained by the at least one of the client computers ahead of any local ones of the deltas waiting to be transmitted to the server computer and reconciles the deltas from the one or more other of the client computers and the local ones of the deltas.

21. A method for collaborating among computers, comprising:

coupling one or more client computers to a server computer via a communications network, wherein;

the client computers and the server computer each maintain a copy of a model comprised of a graphical design, wherein the graphical design is composed of two-dimensional (2D) and/or three-dimensional (3D) objects;

the client computers and the server computer each maintain a history of changes made to the model, wherein the history is comprised of one or more deltas containing only results of operations making modifications to the objects, but not the operations themselves;

at least one of the client computers transmits only the deltas to the server computer to update the copy of the model maintained by the server computer, in order to reflect changes made to the copy of the model maintained by the at least one of the client computers; and

the server computer accepts or rejects the transmitted deltas, updates the copy of the model and the history maintained by the server computer using only the accepted deltas, but not by replaying the operations making modifications to the objects, and then transmits only the accepted deltas to one or more others of the client computers to update the copy of the model maintained by the one or more others of the client computers, in order to reflect changes made to the copy of the model maintained by the server computer.

22. An article of manufacture comprising a program storage medium readable by a computer and tangibly embodying one or more instructions executable by the computer to perform a method for collaborating among computers, the method comprising:

coupling one or more client computers to a server computer via a communications network, wherein;

the client computers and the server computer each maintain a copy of a model comprised of a graphical design, wherein the graphical design is composed of two-dimensional (2D) and/or three-dimensional (3D) objects;

the client computers and the server computer each maintain a history of changes made to the model, wherein the history is comprised of one or more deltas containing only results of operations making modifications to the objects, but not the operations themselves;

at least one of the client computers transmits only the deltas to the server computer to update the copy of the model maintained by the server computer, in order to reflect changes made to the copy of the model maintained by the at least one of the client computers; and

the server computer accepts or rejects the transmitted deltas, updates the copy of the model and the history maintained by the server computer using only the accepted deltas, but not by replaying the operations making modifications to the objects, and then transmits only the accepted deltas to one or more others of the client computers to update the copy of the model maintained by the one or more others of the client computers, in order to reflect changes made to the copy of the model maintained by the server computer.