An Integrated 2D and 3D Shape-based Search Framework and Applications

Abstract

Traditional computer-aided design tools have lead to proliferation of products. In itself CAD systems have become complex to use with many features. In the light of the use of menu driven systems, this article proposes a freehand sketch driven search and reuse of designs, beautification of sketches, and a new interaction paradigm with navigation. We review our prior work in this area in an integrated fashion. The central part of this paper addresses the representation of both 2D sketches and 3D designs in a manner that is tailored for engineering. The interaction of the user with the sketch based search forms a natural interface for interaction with both 2D and 3D models. In addition, the interface is also integrated with a constraint solver for freehand sketches. The system can also suggest to the user the part-class name allowing the probing of the classes and semantics in the database. Besides, users can discover new knowledge by navigating our 2D/3D visualization interface freely based on the preliminary retrieval of classification results. Similarity search can be performed any time during the navigation process.