Computer-aided design systems enable the creation of digital product definitions that are widely used throughout the design process. Typically, such product definitions are created after the bulk of [shape] designing has been completed because their creation requires a detailed knowledge of the shape that is to be defined. Shape grammars have been applied in a range of domains to generate design shapes that conform to a given style early in design processes. A key challenge that restricts their implementation lies in the detection of embedded shapes, sub-shapes, which are manipulated according to shape rules to create new shapes. The automatic detection of sub-shapes is an open research question within the shape grammar community. The research reported in this paper explored the use of computer vision techniques to address this problem; the results achieved to date show real promise. An early prototype is presented and demonstrated on a designer's sketches.     «

Computer-aided design systems enable the creation of digital product definitions that are widely used throughout the design process. Typically, such product definitions are created after the bulk of [shape] designing has been completed because their creation requires a detailed knowledge of the shape that is to be defined. Shape grammars have been applied in a range of domains to generate design shapes that conform to a given style early in design processes. A key challenge that restricts their...     »