Mark-It: A Marking User Interface for Cutting Decomposition Time

We present Mark-It, a marking user interface that reduced the time to decompose a set of CAD models exhibiting a range of decomposition problems by as much as fifty percent. Instead of performing about 50 mesh decomposition operations using a conventional UI, Mark-It allows users to perform the same operations by drawing 2D marks in the context of the 3D model. The motivation for this study was to test the potential of a marking user interface for the decomposition aspect of the meshing process. To evaluate Mark-It, we designed a user study that consisted of a brief tutorial of both the non-marking and marking UIs, performing the steps to decompose four models contributed to us by experienced meshers at Sandia National Laboratories, and a post-study debriefing to rate the speed, preference, and overall learnability of the two interfaces. Our primary contributions are a practical user interface design for speeding-up mesh decomposition and an evaluation that helps characterize the pr...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: IMR
• Authors: Nicholas C. Yang, Andrew S. Forsberg, Jason F. Shepherd, Ricardo M. Garcia, Karl G. Merkley
• Keywords: Computational Geometry, Decomposition, IMR 2004, Mesh Decomposition, User Interface