Abstract New research is currently in prog ress to apply Virtual Environment to product assembly because Virtual Environment can prov ide a new type of user interface. This paper introduces the approaches in this domain. We describe the system st ructure, functionism, advantages and problems of Virtual Assembly Planning, w hich are key issues in Virtual Assembly . In the last part of this paper we present the architecture and representat ive features of a typical system, the Virtual Assembly Desig n Environment( VADE) .
