Constraint-driven beautification of freehand sketches is the key for building robust sketch understanding systems and sketch-based interfaces for CAD

Novosibirsk, Russia, August 10, 2009 – LEDAS Ltd., an independent provider of computational components and software development services for the CAD/PLM (Computer-Aided Design and Product Lifecycle Management) market, today announced that ongoing research at Purdue University (USA) in the field of CAD user interfaces, partially supported by LEDAS, has recently resulted in creation of a prototype CAD system that allows users to draw as natural as possible just as one would draw on paper.

In 2007 LEDAS granted a free academic license for its geometric constraint solver LGS 2D to Purdue University. Since then a research group under supervision of Prof. Karthik Ramani has successfully integrated LGS 2D with their prototype with presenting the results at two scientific events. The first presentation was done at the Sixth Eurographics Workshop on Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling, Aug 1-2, New Orleans, USA, co-located with SIGGRAPH 2009. Another paper will appear in the proceedings of the ASME 2009 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference IDETC/CIE 2009, August 30 - September 2, 2009, San Diego, CA, USA.

“Beautification of freehand sketches is integral for building robust sketch understanding systems and sketch-based interfaces for CAD,” said Sundar Murugappan, a Ph.D. student and co-author in both the publications. Professor Ramani added that “Many of the current methods for beautification do not consider some important information implied in the sketches such as spatial relationships (geometric constraints) between primitives. We present our ongoing work, a suggestive interface for constraint-driven beautification of freehand sketches which provides multiple interpretations of the freehand input, from which the user can choose the intended result.” The research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science in Engineering (CISE) – Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS).

“Purdue University is famous for its world leading researchers in the field of computer-aided design and geometric constraint solving, and we are very proud to support their research aimed at building user interfaces for tomorrow’s CAD systems,” said David Levin, CEO and founder, LEDAS Ltd. “We are also supporting several universities in Russia and China by granting them free academic licenses for our computational software. A combination of our industrial experience in the field of constraint-based design with state-of-the art research results in invention of the new generation CAD systems.”

In the framework of its academic licensing program LEDAS grants free licenses for 2D and 3D versions of its geometric constraint solvers LGS to non-commercial Academic and Educational organizations. A Free Academic Licensing approach gives researchers and students a unique opportunity to access this state-of-the art parameterization technology.

About LGS 2D

The LGS 2D geometric constraint solver is a computational module, engineered to support two-dimensional history-free parametric design in CAD and computer graphics systems, as well as many other applications that require geometric and dimensional relationships to be set between geometrical objects. LGS 2D supports creation and modification of geometric models by means of (explicit or implicit) constraints, which are solved simultaneously. To learn more about LGS 2D, visit LEDAS web-site at http://ledas.com/products/lgs2d/

About LEDAS

LEDAS Ltd. is an independent software development company founded in 1999; it is based in Novosibirsk Scientific Centre (Akademgorodok), Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. A leader in constraint-based technologies, LEDAS is a well-known provider of computational software components for PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solutions: geometric constraint solvers for CAD/CAM/CAE, optimization engines for Project Management, Work Scheduling and Meeting Planning as well as interval technologies for Knowledge-Based Engineering and Collaborative Design. The company also provides services for PLM market: software development, consulting, reselling as well as education and training. More information about LEDAS is available at http://www.ledas.com

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