Features and design intent in engineering sketches

Abstract

We investigate the problem of determining design intent from engineering sketches: what did the designer have in mind when sketching a component? Specifically, we consider the unidirectional reverse mapping from form features, as determined from an input sketch, to design features, representing the design intent present in the designer’s mind. We introduce a list of com- mon engineering form features. For each, we list which geometrical cues may be helpful in identifying these features in design sketches, and we list the design features which such form features commonly imply. We show that a reductionist approach which decomposes a diagram into form features can be used to deduce the design intent of the object portrayed in a drawing. We supply experimental results in support of this idea.