An integrated Approach to Virtual Tape Drawing for Automotive Design

Abstract/Summary

The present paper describes a multimodal approach to authoring in immersive virtual environments. The technique for 3D curve input presented here is based on Taping, which is widely used in automotive design to create and modify characteristic lines of a model on a white board. Taping is used both at design review sessions or at model creation, in which designers fasten tape to back-projections of 3D models or on clay models.

Currently, this approach requires designers to make photographs of their intended changes so they can later be transferred to the 3D CAD representation of the model. This process is time-consuming and can lead to miscommunications between designers and product engineers on how certain curves are to be interpreted.

SketchAR is a multimodal immersive authoring system for Virtual Environments which uses sketching and calligraphic input as its main organizing paradigms. Within SketchAR virtual tape drawing has been integrated as a two-handed multi-modal interaction technique. Using optical tracking and multimodal interactions we have achieved a gadget-free interaction technique to input three-dimensional curves in 3D.

Our approach uses passive optical tracking devices for high-precision and low latency input. Menu free interaction is accomplished through a synergistic combination of hand motion tracking and speech.

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