Chapter 7: Product Assembly and Design

Title: Augmented Tangible Interfaces For CAD Design Review

Author(s): Ronald Sidharta, Adrian Sannier, James Oliver

Address: Virtual Reality Application Center Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 USA | Virtual Reality Application Center Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 USA | Virtual Reality Application Center Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 USA

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2005 pp. 411 - 421

Abstract/Summary: Today's designers and engineers rely on CAD systems to help them finish a design efficiently and accurately, reducing cost and increasing productivity in the midst of competition. Collaborative work has became an increasingly crucial aspect of engineering design as teams grow larger and more diverse, spread across different locations, even around the world. The diversity of team members requires that collaborative tools be transparent with little or no learning curve required of their casual users. However, the complexity of the CAD system's interface can introduce a participation barrier. In a design review context, this barrier prevents diverse team members from directly interacting with the CAD objects. Communication is throttled by the CAD system's operator, restricting the flow of ideas. The goal of the research presented in this paper is to consider an alternative to 2D desktop based interfaces for design review. In considering this alternative interface, we focus on three critical tasks that characterize a typical design review, namely: 3D browsing, 3D positioning/orientation, and 3D assembly/disassembly. Using augmented reality technology, we present a set of tangible user interfaces that support these three tasks by allowing the users to see virtual 3D models on tangible objects and enabling them to 'handle' the virtual 3D models naturally as if they were real, physical objects. Based on our experience, we believe that augmented reality based tangible interfaces are a promising area of further study, particularly in their application to the manipulation and evaluation of 3D designs. Furthermore, we conclude that augmented reality has the potential for substantially enhancing collaborative product development processes, despite some limitations that exist today.

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