Development of an Intuitive 3D Sketching Tool

3D sketching is a confusing description of an architectural design means. It is confusing, or even worse apparently wrong, because traditional sketching is inherently a two dimensional activity. Though the final stages of design are currently well support by CAD packages, almost every architect prefers paper and pencil for the early sketching phases. The challenge is to develop a (computer supported) design tool that is as direct and intuitive as paper and pencil. The computer enables us to directly map our spatial mental model into 3D rendered images. As such a new kind of design means is created which is best indicated as an intuitive 3D sketching tool. Within the VR-DIS research programme of the Design Systems group of the Eindhoven University of Technology a tool named DDDoolz has been developed as an experimental 3D sketching tool. This paper will report on the preliminary phase in which several input devices such as mouse, bird and voice were tested. For this purpose simple prototype applications were implemented. Building upon these experiences a functional brief was defined for the sketching tool. The system design will be elaborated in this paper using 00 schema techniques. Because of its limited yet powerful functionality, a comprehensive system description can be presented. The application has been used in a first years CAD course. Students’ experiences will be discussed demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of DDDoolz. In conclusion, a list of improvements will be presented and the future directions are indicated that will be followed in regard of the continuing research on design and decision support tools.