Abstract: The system employs feature as its collaborative design element and uses XML for defining feature operations and communication protocol among the server and clients. To reduce network load and increase response ability of the system, feature information is updated incrementally between the server and client. As it is based on Web Service, the system can support collaborative design when working on heterogeneous platforms. The framework and communication protocol are discussed in detail. A prototype system is built and tested. Experiments show that the system can effectively support collaborative design under distributed environment.