Creating Principal 3D Curves with Digital Tape Drawing

Abstract

Previous systems have explored the challenges of designing an interface for automotive styling which combine the metaphor of 2D drawing using physical tape with thesimultaneous creation and management of a correspondingvirtual 3D model. These systems have been limited to only2D planar curves while typically the principal characteristiccurves of an automotive design are three dimensional andnon-planar. We present a system which addresses thislimitation. Our system allows a designer to construct thesenon-planar 3D curves by drawing a series of 2D curves usingthe 2D tape drawing technique and interaction style. Theseresults are generally applicable to the interface design of 3Dmodeling applications and also to the design of arm’s lengthinteraction on large scale display systems.