Advanced application of powerful computer tools at engineering design of advanced products related activities means creating integrated product models in advanced computer systems. Leading application oriented master model concepts and standards as STEP serve this purpose. Engineers are working simultaneously on product design. Results of engineering decisions are analyzed for loads, aesthetics and manufacturability. Product design, results of analyses, processes of manufacturing of parts and much more are described in integrated product model. This model is accessed by several engineers simultaneously and is communicated with other engineering design environments. Because most of prototype development activities are being moved into computer systems, advanced modeling is often cited as virtual pro-, totyping. This paper summarizes and relates some advanced modeling approaches and methods to emphasize main trends in fulfilling demands for modeling tools in the early 21th century. As one of the key issues a manufacturing process model associative with form feature based part model is introduced. This model was proposed by the authors. The motivation is that low level integration of design and manufacturing of mechanical parts is still a main drawback of efficient application of expensive modeling systems. The proposed method ’allows for creating part models simultaneously with their analysis of machineability. In this paper chapter 2 outlines the scene of modeling based decision making of engineers as well as levels of product model creation. Chapter 3 explains the prevailing modeling principles, while chapter 4 emphasizes structure descriptions. In chapter 5 the proposed associative, Petri net model representation based manufacturing process modeling and its potential applications are explained are detailed. Two additional key subject areas are discussed in chapter 6 and chapter 7, namely effects of globalization on modeling and product data management. The main aspect of discussion is model and communication based group work of engineers.
