A design process is difficult to describe comprehensively because a design problem has a multi-disciplinary nature and the design itself evolves as solutions are attempted by the designer. The process of design has been investigated in this paper with the purpose of characterizing the role that a system of this kind may have. In defining the system, an approach has been used that privileges the relationships with the existing CAD tools based on data exchange standards in course of definition today. Integrated design environment normally consists of a centralized data model a data management system and a set of CAD tools. In this study, all further investigations are directed towards the data management system, as one of the main components of the proposed environment. Moreover, product modeling, as a prerequisite for the data management core, is taken into special consideration.