| Intelligent Mechanical Engineering Design Environment: From Sketching to Simulation The Problem: (2008) | |||||||||||||||
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| Interfaces to mechanical design systems seriously limit the user’s creativity, while freehand drawing does not allow the user to interact with his sketch as a mechanical system. We would like to provide a natural environment for sketching and developing mechanical systems. We are doing this by building an environment that combines the creative freedom of freehand sketching with the technical feedback of viewing and running the sketch as a 2D kinematic simulation. Motivation: The tradeoff between the ease of drawing a mechanical design on paper and the power of representing it on a computer is too great. The unnatural feel of CAD and simulation software inhibits the design process, so engineers design with pencil and paper, rarely transferring their designs to the computer until they are almost complete. An engineer should be able to sketch directly onto the computer, having it feel as natural as sketching on paper, while being able to test their design through simulation at all parts of the design process. The computer should keep track of the engineer’s actions and intentions, not only interpreting the sketch as he draws, but also recording the design process by asking intelligent questions as he sketches. Previous Work: | |||||||||||||||
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