Creation of concept shape designs via a virtual reality interface

This paper describes an approach for creating concept shape designs in a virtual reality environment-COVIRDs (COnceptual VIRtual Design System). Concept design refers to the ab initio design of a product or part. In concept design, the product details such as shape features and exact dimensions are not rigidly defined and the designer has some freedom in determining the shape and dimensions of the product. Current CAD require the designer to specify shape and dimensions to create CAD models of products even though these are probably not necessary at the concept development stage. COVIRDs overcomes these drawbacks by providing a bi-modal voice and hand-tracking based user interface to the VR-based CAD modeling environment. This interface allows rapid concept design creation without requiring time consuming shape description and the tedious specifications of exact dimensions. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.