Creativity Meets Constraints - Sketch-Based CAD for Industrial Designers with Engineering Constraint Management

该奖项的研究目标是使设计师能够通过基于草图的建模界面开发3D产品形式，同时允许他们无缝地管理和适应已知的工程限制。这项研究将导致概念设计的新方法，其中需要乏味的下游努力的无指导的探索活动被一套指导的但自由形式的设计活动所取代。通过允许在生成表单的同时考虑工程约束，拟议的研究旨在使产品设计显著更精简、更专注和更高效，同时最大限度地减少昂贵的设计后工作。主要的研究任务和由此产生的贡献将是一套新的计算技术和相关软件，能够在存在尺寸、布局和人体工学约束的情况下创建和探索概念形状。如果成功，这项研究的结果将通过允许重要的设计标准与概念形式设计同时管理和应用来改进当前的设计实践。反过来，这将有助于缓解当前设计环境中可能发生的许多代价高昂的冲突。这一努力还将通过建立一个实用的基于草图的3D设计平台来加强以人为中心的设计研究和教育的基础设施，几乎不需要或不需要坚实的建模专业知识。调查人员将指导本科生进行独立研究项目，并在他们所在机构定期提供的设计课程中提供由此产生的软件。最后，拟议系统的新颖交互功能将被用于通过教育和推广计划吸引非工程师和K-12学生进行工程和技术创新。

The research objective of this award is to enable designers to develop 3D product forms through a sketch-based modeling interface, while allowing them to seamlessly manage and accommodate known engineering constraints. This research will result in new methods for conceptual design in which the unguided exploration activities necessitating tedious downstream efforts are replaced by a set of guided, yet free-form design activities. By allowing engineering constraints to be considered concurrently with form generation, the proposed study aims to make product design significantly more streamlined, focused, and efficient, while minimizing costly post-design efforts. The primary research task and the resulting contribution will be a suite of novel computational techniques and associated software that enable conceptual shape creation and exploration in the presence of dimensional, layout, and ergonomic constraints.If successful, the results of this research will enhance current design practices by allowing important design criteria to be managed and applied concurrently with conceptual form design. This, in turn, will help alleviate many of the costly conflicts that are likely to occur in the current design settings. This effort will also enhance the infrastructure for human-centric design research and education by establishing a practical sketch-based 3D design platform, requiring little or no solid modeling expertise. The investigators will mentor undergraduate students on independent research projects and make the resulting software available in the design courses they regularly offer in their institutions. Finally, the novel interactive features of the proposed system will be used to engage non-engineers and K-12 students with engineering and technological innovation through educational and outreach programs.