Immersive sketching as a tool for the evaluation of CAD data - a new approach for the design process

In this work a concept for a system to support design meetings was developed and implemented as a prototype. The system shall enable the participants to present their ideas to the others by sketching directly on to the three dimensional virtual prototypes. Results from researchers in the field of sociology lead to the features such a system should provide. The main goal is to support meetings of several specialists like engineers, designers, marketing specialists and so on. Obviously the technical devices must not block the communication of the people with each other. Furthermore the system has to be easy to use, as it shall not be used only by experts. The usage of the system has to be ergonomically in order to not wear out the users more than the traditional way of their work would do over several hours. An other important point was to enable several users at the same time to work with the system analogously to the conventional scenario, where every participant has his own pen and paper to make notes or sketch something to describe his ideas to the others. In contrast to sketches on paper these sketches can be done directly on the three dimensional prototypes, which come from CAD systems. If desired, these prototypes including the annotations can be viewed three dimensional using tracked stereo glasses. This way one gets a very realistic impression of the prototype. Thanks to the paradigm of each user drawing on his virtual pieces of paper on the table, this realistic view of objects is available for several users around the Virtual Table now.