Spatial Expressions in Design Idea Capture Languages
Spatial Expressions in Design Idea Capture Languages
Computing Department, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
Presented at
AID'96 Workshop on Visual Representation, Reasoning and Interaction in Design,
Stanford University, June 1996.
Open University Computing Department Research Report 95/16
Abstract. Intelligent support systems for conceptual design in engineering have so far failed to support spatial thinking in conceptual design. But multimedia interface technology including techniques for recognising speech and drawn gestures offers solutions to the HCI problems involved in computer support for spatial conceptual design. Effective computer support could be made possible by the use of a design idea capture language for expressing and changing shapes and qualitative spatial and functional relationships, fluently in a machine-understandable way. The design idea capture language would serve to constrain the expression of design ideas sufficiently to enable the successful use of AI techniques for generating coherent spatial representations from sets of spatial expressions in the language. This paper discusses the design meanings required for spatial conceptual design with reference to linguistic studies of spatial expressions in natural language, which show that geometric approaches are insufficient for representing spatial relationships important in design.
Author address. |
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Martin Stacey
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