Enhancing 3D design with semantics

An innovative 3D design system using semantic information has proven its ability to overcome many of the drawbacks of existing Computer-Aided Design (CAD) programmes, speeding the work of designers and opening the door to an array of commercial applications in a broad variety of sectors.

The IST programme-funded SpacemantiX project, which ended in April, resulted in a series of pilot tools for use in mechanical and automotive engineering, interior design and architecture, and toy manufacturing, reflecting the potential for the system to be employed in virtually any sector where designers have to manipulate and interlink multiple three dimensional components. By using semantic as well as spatial information the system defines what components can be placed where, how they will interact and how overall designs should be configured, making design processes easier for expert and non-expert users alike.

“The technique ensures that everything knows where it is supposed to belong in the design, whether it is part of a car engine or the chairs in a dining room,” explains project coordinator Rainer Malkewitz at ZGDV in Germany. “By eliminating many of the more laborious aspects of a design project, the system saves designers time and greatly increases their efficiency.”

The interior planning and architectural pilot shows particularly clearly the benefits of SpacemantiX over traditional CAD systems. Designers are able to simply drag and drop objects onto the design and let these automatically arrange themselves based on their semantic and spatial properties.

“Because of the inter-object constraints chairs, for example, will automatically go to the table in the right position and a coffee table will position itself in front of the sofa. In today’s CAD systems aligning such objects would take hundreds of clicks whereas with SpacemantiX it can be done in one click through the use of assisted placement,” Malkewitz says.

SpacemantiX also incorporates advanced graphics rendering to show the colours and textures of an object and improve visualisation, while enhancing access to components databases by making searches seamless and more intuitive.

In two tests carried out by the project, designers using SpacemantiX completed interior plans four to five times faster than those using traditional CAD tools. The semantic data, the coordinator notes, could also contain information about the style of an object – “a Louis XVI chair would go with a Louis XVI table” – while spatial data ensures that chairs are placed with sufficient leg room or that objects are not blocking doors.

“Using spatial constraints is particularly important for instance in office design, due to health and safety concerns,” Malkewitz says.

Similar improvements over traditional techniques were also evident in the other two pilots, which the coordinator notes are possibly closer to the market and are likely to be used commercially in the near future.

Automobile manufacturers, including Saab, Volvo and Ford, have expressed an interest in using the SpacemantiX system for engineering designs and in particular for developing interactive manuals.

“A car mechanic could use an interactive manual downloaded from the Internet to see the design of different components of a specific model of car and view interactively how the components fit together and how they should be dismantled,” Malkewitz explains. “Even for producing paper construction and repair manuals the system offers major advantages. We estimate that it cuts the production time for one page of a manual down to around two hours from the eight it takes with traditional line drawings, while also reducing the need for text, thereby saving on translation because a good 3D example can say much more than words.”

Another “real success story” of the project, in the view of the coordinator, is in the toy sector, however, where one of the project partners is planning to launch a commercial design tool within a year.

According to Francisco Ibañez at the Spanish Toy Research Association AIJU, a software platform based on SpacemantiX to allow the customisation of toys could mark a “small revolution” in the sector.

“Within the scope of the project a prototype of a toy design system we’ve called 3D Assembling has been developed. It is currently being used by three of our member companies and we are planning to begin marketing a finished product early next year,” Ibañez says. “At first it will be aimed at the conceptual design of new products by toy manufacturers although we are also planning to allow toy stores to order customised products and eventually allow consumers themselves to order personalised toys either through a store or from home over the Internet.”

While allowing professional designers to develop new models from scratch “in as little as five minutes” by combining different components, the easy to use tool would also create a new toy-buying concept with children able to pick and choose the look and colour of say a remote controlled car or a model airplane. “We are also considering incorporating a graphics add-in that would allow them to create personalised stickers for the toy, possibly based on a digital photo,” Ibañez says. “Customisation will be a major development in the toy sector.”