Two-step 3-dimensional sketching tool for new product development

This paper discusses a two-step virtual reality based conceptual design tool that enables industrial designers to create sketches of their ideas in 3-dimensional space in real time. In the developed sketching tool, the rough shapes of products are generated by tracing the trajectory of the data-gloves worn by the designer. In the model a practical solution is provided to reduce the generation of unnecessary control points. This is achieved by representing each control point by a spherical volume. Once the rough sketching is completed, NURBS surfaces are constructed by the limited number of reference points that are selected from the initial sketch by using a virtual pen. The two-steps sketching technique enables designers to perform their artistic characteristics freely in an intuitive environment and also enables designers to generate parametric representations of the surfaces to be used in CAD/CAM systems for further analysis.