DesignersWorkbench: Towards real-time immersive modeling

This paper introduces the DesignersWorkbench, a semi-immersive virtual environment for two-handed modeling, sculpting and analysis tasks. The paper outlines the fundamental tools, design metaphors and hardware components required for an intuitive real-time modeling system. As companies focus on streamlining productivity to cope with global competition, the migration to computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems has established a new backbone of modern industrial product development. However, traditionally a product design frequently originates from a clay model that, after digitization, forms the basis for the numerical description of CAD primitives. The DesignersWorkbench aims at closing this technology or `digital gap' experienced by design and CAD engineers by transforming the classical design paradigm into its fully integrated digital and virtual analog allowing collaborative development in a semi-immersive virtual environment. This project emphasizes two key components from the classical product design cycle: freeform modeling and analysis. In the freedom modeling stage, content creation in the form of two-hand sculpting of arbitrary objects using polygonal, volumetric or mathematically defined primitive is emphasized, whereas the analysis component provides the tools required for pre- and post-processing steps for finite element analysis tasks applied to the created models.