Re: [brlcad-devel] GSoC Enthusiast hoping to build a multi-touch user-interface in the Computer Aided Design systems

[Christopher S. M. <br...@ma...>]

Ashish,

Thanks for the message and interest in working with BRL-CAD!  Your idea of working on a touch screen interface for CAD is interesting and something several of us have been following the research literature on for many years now.  It's a very enticing concept but I have several questions about what you'd foresee being the near term gains and what you have to say about some of the criticisms that MTI's have received.

 
>In this regard I feel that we can have a headway start in developing
>multi-touch capabilities in CAD softwares.
>I do feel that Multi-Touch(MT) stuff is still in infancy stage but it has
>started to show its effect through the phenomenal success of IPhone and
>various big-shot companies are puring in huge money to develop in-house
>multi-touch software. Hence I would like to propose to start with the
>development of MT based user interface for CAD systems in open source.

You do identify one potential problem there.  MT is in its infancy, even with efforts like Surface and various phones that now support MT.  What's not been shown yet, though, is the efficacy of MT for non-casual interactions.
 
>It is much more intuitive and friendly way for an architect or a designer to
>develop and show models with his both hands by directly touching the models
>instead of using the mouse as a pointer device which is more abstract.

Intuitive and friendly, but not shown to necessarily be more (or less) productive either as far as I know for "real work".  It makes a great demo and probably even makes for a great visualization interface, but would you want to use it for actual architecting or designing?  Maybe.  Therein, though, is a dilemma in terms of defining a project that can be scoped with specific goals. :-)  How do you see that working?

Similarly, the various multicontact gestures for 2D imagery is easy enough but how would you go about extending that to 3D?  Is there any research you'd be using to back up a given direction?
 
>In the first phase I would like to develop aaplication and libraries to help
>in interacting with the already build models in an interactive way on a
>multi-touch device.
>
>In the second phase, I will work on how to develop a User Interface so that
>a designer can very easily develop models as well as has a commandline
>running at the same time to give fast inputs. I agree to the fact that
>currently it is much more covinient and faster to develop a model with
>commandline. It will start with taking inspirations from Google's Sketchup
>but will be much more intuitive and easy to use and I hope will become much
>different than that.

As is often the case, the least intuitive and least user-friendly interface is often one of the most efficient interfaces.  Ignoring productivity, though, as there are plenty of folks that use operating systems that are entirely less efficient because they think they're easier/familiar, these phases you speak of would need to tie directly in with BRL-CAD.

You need to propose how you'd enhance BRL-CAD, not how you'd make something that could then be used to enhance BRL-CAD.  How does your project fit in with our tools and services specifically?  If it's some general framework that you want to work on that could just as easily be completely independent of BRL-CAD, then that would be more like an independent study project that is outside the realm of GSoC.

>own a MT surface. The project has been highly popular and is available for
>both windows and Lniux. This project was my GSoC project last summer which I
>successfully completed under the mentorship of NuiGroup (Pawel Solyga).

Glad to hear that.  Paweł is a good guy with a lot of good insights to share.

>I have a working knowledge experince with MGED and Archer and have already
>started looking into the code base and the libraries of BRL-CAD.

Awesome.  The more you can tie your work into what we already have and do, the better off your proposal will come across as being directly beneficial and applicable to our community at large.

In any regard, thanks again for the interest and I look forward to hearing more about your project and your proposal.

Cheers!
Sean