The competitive industrial environment and innovation needs in the industry nowadays have led to fast changes in industrial technology, and to the evolution of classical design methods in the engineering profession. At the same time, the tools used for design and construction of industrial processes and products are almost all computer-aided tools. Today we can affirm that these tools are of several types: computers, CD-ROMs, CD-RAMs, software, document and image archives, technical data banks, etc. In this context, engineers’ training needs must be completely re-thought, keeping in mind that their knowledge must be updated within very short cycles. One of the consequences of these dynamics is fast decreasing products life-cycle on the one hand, as flexibility requirements for processes with reliability, availability and long life-cycle constraints increases just as fast on the other hand. This challenge implies the development of computer-aided design tools based on structured research and data gathering methods, capable of managing scientific, industrial and technological data banks, archive files, 2 and 3-D images, videos, etc. The aim of the design workshop at the University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) is to create a flexible data bank which can operate on several interfaced environments and provide users with quick access to technological and economic information concerning systems design. The Computer-aided design workshop under development at the UTT is a library system technology, which uses a flexible architecture, based on open and fractal architecture files and software. This workshop constitutes a link between higher education and industrial training needs for products design and industrial systems design. The design workshop interacts with other similar systems in a dynamic way. One of the main goals of this structure is to provide a tool which can utilise other systems as reference libraries and to which other information sources can be easily added. The workshop includes software packages, Internet access, Intranet libraries, access to universities net libraries, industrial component libraries and so on. It also provides tools for physical and mathematical simulation in a relatively flexible environment. Moreover, it allows for the definition of priorities and links among materials, processes and their environment. It is clear that such a tool represents important support to University-Industry links for education and training. This paper is organised in four main sections. In the introductory section, after having situated the Industrial Engineering Department in the global strategy of the UTT, the ongoing project under development is described. Teaching, training, research and technology transfer objectives are then presented. In the second section, the design workshop organisation, architecture, file structures and data management are described. The strategy used to construct the various data banks is presented by recalling the main difficulties encountered. Next, Two teaching applications, one in industrial mechanics and the other in product and process design are treated in the third section as examples using standard lecturing and applied self-study format respectively. Finally, the assessment evaluation and future development perspectives in terms of technology transfer opportunities are presented in the conclusion.