The paper presents a visual knowledge-based approach for designing collaborative networks of engineering design organizations. The novelty of this holistic approach lies in integrated modelling of business, engineering, and learning processes. Distributed design tasks are easier coordinated due to explicit representation of management procedures as visual knowledge models of design flows and workflows. Furthermore, these visual models enable definition of design task patterns that can support design innovation management and learning across distributed teams. Proliferation of this approach in engineering communities is conditioned by availability of appropriate open platforms enabling distributed collaborative design and continuous learning processes in a frame of a collaborative engineering network.