Alternatives in computer-aided design and visual analytics

设计和选择替代方案是专业工作的一个关键方面，可用的工具对此提供的支持很少。当前参数化软件的趋势加剧了对备选方案的明确表示的需求，因为这些工具会产生多种输出。该提案旨在参数化系统的表示、可视化和选择，应用于两个领域：计算机辅助建筑设计（CAD）和视觉分析（VA）。现有的替代接口是由诸如版本控制、分支、历史、起源、撤销和画廊等概念构成的。所有这些在设计和分析中都是有用的。没有一个能完成所有的设计任务。该项目将替代方案的表示形式从绑定到特定任务中抽象出来，取而代之的是通过集合、可视化、可配置的创建/编辑操作和同步编辑来构建替代方案。研究前提是：(1)备选方案是模型状态；(2)备选集合是第一类对象；(3)集合可以根据多种关系（创建时间、编辑时间、输入相似度、输出相似度、设计师选择等）进行排序；(4)多个这样的集合可以同时提供；(5)用户决定集合的生成、可视化和交互方式；(6)系统提供通用的、可重构的工具和策略，用于生成、可视化、选择和与集合交互；(7)系统提供了同时编辑多个模型的能力。系统默认为支持已知任务的配置。用户可以重新配置系统以支持新的任务。一个非常简单的例子是通过撤销支持错误恢复，其中系统策略是在可选列表的末尾添加每个编辑过的状态，接口是这些状态的序列，可以按顺序遍历这些状态。一个更复杂的例子是探索，在这个例子中，用户产生一小部分状态的变化，每个状态都被安排在接近其变化的状态的位置。

Devising and choosing alternatives is a key aspect of professional work, for which available tools provide little support. The current trend to parametric software sharpens the need for explicit representation of alternatives as these tools produce multiple outputs. This proposal aims at representation, visualization and choice of alternatives in parametric systems, applied to two domains: computer-aided building design (CAD) and visual analytics (VA). The extant interfaces for alternatives are structured by ideas such as versioning, branching, history, provenance, undo and galleries. All of these are useful at some point in design and analysis. None fulfill all design tasks. This project abstracts the representation of alternatives away from being bound to specific tasks, instead structuring alternatives by collections, visualizations, configurable creation/editing operations, and simultaneous editing.The research premises are that (1) alternatives are model states; (2) collections of alternatives are first class objects; (3) collections may be ordered by multiple relationships (creation time, edit time, input similarity, output similarity, designer choice,...); (4) multiple such collections can be simultaneously available; (5) users decide how collections are generated, visualized and interact; (6) the system provides general, reconfigurable tools and policies for generating, visualizing, selecting and interacting with collections; and (7) the system provides capabilities for simultaneous editing of multiple models. The system defaults to configurations supporting known tasks. The user can reconfigure the system to support new tasks. A very simple example is supporting error recovery through undo, in which the system policy is to add each edited state at the end of an alternative list and the interface is to a sequence of such states, which can be sequentially traversed. A more complex example is exploration, in which a user produces variations of a small collection of states, each of which is arranged so as to stay close to the state from which it is a variation.