User Interface Design and Realization of a DesignbySketches System
Author(s): Amit Shesh, Baoquan Chen.
Proceedings: Submitted to UIST 2004,
2004.
[BibTeX] 
Abstract:
This paper describes the user interface design techniques for a design-by-sketches system. The overall goal of the system is to support 3D object design through natural and interactive sketching processes. The system entails four unique features: (1) a tight coupling of direct and gestured sketching in both 2D and 3D domains; (2) a user invokable feedback system for supervised stroke interpretation, processing and 3D reconstruction; (3) harnessing both the hardware (pen device) and software (development toolkits) of the commodity Tablet PC; and finally (4) blending the new interface with limited amount of well accepted WIMP interface elements to ease a smooth adaptation to the new drawing conventions introduced in our system. We present issues and propose solutions to achieve these interface features and relevant sketching and construction operations. In addition to the interface design, we also discuss the reconstruction of sketched curved objects. Finally, we provide preliminary user evaluation and offer insights drawn from it.