COLLABORATIVE CONCEPTUAL MODELING USING THE SKETCH FRAMEWORK

1st Eurographics Workshop on …, 2004

We present an interface for collaborative conceptual design that combines sketch elements, direct manipulation of 3D objects and non-photorealistic rendering. Such a combination results in a simple and intuitive 2D-sketch-to-3D modeling system suitable for novice users. It allows users potentially located in geographically distant areas to cooperate by sketching, exploring and modifying their ideas interactively, with immediate visual feedback. Our system prototype supports several modeling primitives and can be extended to handle user-defined objects. Potential applications of our system include early stages of urban and landscape design, rapid prototype of virtual environments, animation, education and recreational use.

2006 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, 2006

Sketch plays an important role in the brainstorming of ideas. During conceptual design stage, designers use generally 2D graphical tools such as pencil and paper to draw a lot of sketchy documents for conveying ideas and communicating with other designers. Furthermore, conceptual design for complicated system involves a group of geographically distributed participants. However, most of current graphical design tools do not support such kind of collaborative sketching. This paper introduces a novel sketch-based interactive environment (COSINE) for cooperative design. Three key problems are addressed in this research: (1) how to represent and store sketch document for sketch-based cooperative design; (2) how does the system infer the designers' intention and help them to finish the design process;(3) how to implement the communication between client and server. Solutions to these problems are proposed in this paper. A prototype system for cooperative UML class diagram design based on COSINE is also outlined.

2008

An increasing number of large scale projects requires that distant teams collaborate together remotely. At the same time, the current CAD tools only offer minimal support for partial and asynchronous interactions. The application we propose enables full synchronous and remote sketch-based collaborative design. This setup is a combination of a virtual desktop (a remote meeting table), a standard videoconference system, a gesture recognition module and a networked, real-time, collaborative drawing software (SketSha). The solution as a whole is multimodal in essence (gestures, speech, drawing…) supporting immersive remote collaborative design.

… -Aided Design and Computer Graphics, 2007 …, 2007

A number of diagrams are used for representing design concepts and constructing function structure in the stage of conceptual design. This paper considers sketches as the language of communication in cooperative conceptual design and presents a tool that enables distributed participants ...

2003

We present a system for collaborative conceptual design that allows users potentially located in geographically distant areas to cooperate by sketching, exploring and modifying their ideas interactively, with immediate visual feedback. The system supports several modeling primitives and can be easily extended with user-defined objects. In this context, we introduce the notions of animated and sketchy billboards. Applications of this system include early stages of urban and landscape design, rapid prototype of virtual environments, animation, education and recreational use.

2011

Many tools help GUI designers to produce prototypes of their future applications, but when this job requires the collaboration with geographically dispersed partners some problems arise like lack awareness of the others' work, concurrent manipulation of virtual objects and non-fluent communication of actions and intentions. WeSketch allows a small geographically distributed group to build GUI prototypes in a highly participative manner, keeping everyone aware of what is going on. A 3D virtual round table, virtual sheets simulating sketches, avatars representing users, an audio communication system and a shared view of sketches are the pieces that allow designers to discuss and co-design GUIs in real time offering a comfortable and pleasant experience. This paper describes the tool and the results of a set of experiments conducted in order to validate the hypothesis: "WeSketch allows a small group of designers who are geographically dispersed to be more efficient and feel more motivated during the GUI Sketching task than they do with current tools".

2007

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008

This paper presents a new supporting tool for distant collaborative design, named SketSha. This prototype supports the early stages of design and more particularly the initial and crucial step of free-hand sketching. SketSha and its particular interface, named the virtual desktop, aim to keep from Front-To-Front collaborative work all the benefits and to appoint to them some of the nowadays IT facilities, in order to manage in a realistic and efficient way a long distance collaboration and to effectively serve the designers' needs. Our hope is to re-introduce the social aspects and group interactions, crucial for real system efficacy and adaptation to the business world. The paper presents the fundamental assumptions made to implement SketSha, that are questioned and analyzed through a real-size experimentation featuring 30 architecture and building engineering students, working together in real-time in different locations (Belgium and France). This experiment and the necessary survey open up interesting fields of investigations, such as the relevance of the sketch stage and the proposed device to support distant collaborative design in architecture and the benefit it represents for students, in a pedagogical point of view, to merge the IT aspects and the design studio. The methodology and the replicability are analyzed to increase the level and quality of our students' formation and, finally, a critic of SketSha constitutes a benefit for the developing teams.

In this paper we present an application we developed for collaborative sketch sharing within a design process. We review the specific application development process and discuss the features of the application itself. The tool has been tested and used in a design studio setting between two universities located in different countries. We observed that it is suitable for architectural communication, and also allows monitoring of the sketch activity during the design process. This paper also describes application architecture and selected technologies. We have furthermore defined multiple groups of application requirements. Our self-developed application was proven to suit specified needs and overcame previously tested commercial tools.

Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics

Sketching plays a very important role in conceptual design. In this early stage of the design process, designers have developed some ways to help them to explore designs in its early phases. Sketching is one of these methods. In this paper, a study of sketch nature was carried and a proposed sketch-based interface for modeling was designed. Sketch nature study investigated the cognitive activities in sketching process, analyzed sketches of design students and professional designers, and collected data about sketching process and sketch-based systems requirements from designers to develop sketching scenarios and determine sketch-based systems requirements. These requirements were used to design a proposed sketch-based system for conceptual design with a multi-windows approach. The proposed system aims to provide an easy way for designers to sketch freely and for ideas to flow easily by using a multi-windows approach for sketching, 3D generation and rendering.