Title: Introducing design intent in discrete surface modelling

Authors: Chiara Eva Catalano

Addresses: IMATI-CNR - Sez. Genova, Via De Marini, 6, 16149, Genova, Italy

Abstract: In the early design phases, stylists need high-level tools to properly support their creativity. In a sketch, the character of an object is usually impressed through certain curves, semantically important from the aesthetic point of view. Therefore, modelling with a curve-oriented methodology seems to reflect designers| habits during the sketching phase. Capturing such semantics of curves is the intention of the proposed modelling approach. The concept of styling features is here described and applied to a discrete surface representation, preferred to the standard splines in order to answer still exiting drawbacks of continuous representations along the entire development process. In this paper, features obtainable by means of generalised sweep operations are defined and treated on subdivision surfaces. The choice of this type of feature is due to the expressive power in describing recurring shapes in industrial products.

Keywords: feature-based modelling; freeform modelling; styling activity; subdivision surfaces; design intent; surface modelling; styling features; early form sketching; curve semantics; surface representation; product design; design creativity; recurring shapes; product development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2005.006469

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2005 Vol.23 No.2/3/4, pp.108 - 119

Published online: 13 Mar 2005 *

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