Collaborative Design has currently become one of key technologies to solve complex product design problems. Based on new problems of existing collaborative design, the study puts forward a method of building VPDM, and uses an exchanging method of feature-adding data to resolve problems of heterogeneous PDM and CAD systems among enterprises. Firstly, a definition of VPDM was presented, and the basic principle of VPDM-based collaborative design was introduced. Secondly, the framework of VPDM-based collaborative design was proposed and each components of VPDM were analyzed. Then, the operation model and the unified feature model represented by Express-G were built and mapped into database. Finally, the feature-adding collaborative design sequence diagram was described in VPDM environment. By using the above method, the prototype system developed in the study enables the collaborative design in two kinds of CAD and PDM software in principle.