A computer-aided architectural and engineering design system that combines the power of geometric modelling utilities with the intuitive design and communication capabilities of drafting utilities is presented. The system, called WORLDVIEW, achieves this integration by representing the designed artifact non-redundantly in a 3-dimensional World and manipulates it through multiple 2-dimensional Views. The world consists of a collection of shapes that store all the formative information which is fertinent to the designed artifact, while the views consist of images of selected shapes, generated through particular two-way mapping transforms. Several views that depict the same set of shapes through different transforms can be displayed simultaneously, using multiple, dynamic, user-defined windows, thereby enabling addressability of points in the 3-dimensional world. Information that facilitates the communication of the designed artifact to other participants in the fabrication process, but which is not part of the artifact itself (such as dimension lines and annotations), is contained within the view rather than the world. This information is, nevertheless, linked dynamically to the model, such that when the latter is modified, the information stored by the views changes accordingly. Views are thus similar to conventional drawings in that they depict a scaled 2-dimensional image of a 3-dimensional artifact along with dimension lines and annotations. They differ, however, from conventional drawings in that they do not actually store the shape of the artifact itself, instead, they store references to the components of the 3-dimensional model that have been deemed visible in a given view. When the designer uses a particular view, those components of the model undergo a projection transformation, as prescribed by the view, which results in a 2-dimensional image that is displayed on the screen. By inverting the transformation, the changes that have been applied by the designer to the projected image are conveyed back to the 3-dimensional model, thereby providing the means to modify and manipulate it. Since all views depict the same world, they are not independent of each other; a change in the world made through one view is immediately apparent in all other views in which the modified component is imaged. The WORLDVIEW system is based on the one-to-many relationship between the 3-dimensional model (The ‘World’) that represents the artifact and the 2-dimensional images of that model that are used to visualize and manipulate it (the ‘Views’). Their integration simplifies the use of powerful modelling utilities by designers and enhances the integrity of the designed artifact.