Shape deformations with meaningful parameters and constraints

The newly emerged computer-aided industrial design (CAID) systems gain increasing popularity among industrial designers. Despite the large number of deformation techniques already implemented in commercial systems or described in the literature, these techniques still lack in providing designers with meaningful shape deformations tools. In this work, we address this issue through the allocation of meaningful parameters and constraints to support specific shape deformations. Therefore, we introduce the concept of a shape context, which incorporates specific parameters' constraints and shape variation procedures that helps designers to quicker reach a desired shape. A shape design tool, MAPTool, has been developed based on the shape context concept. MAPTool helps designers to reach different shapes using one shape deformation through the alteration of its two meaningful parameters. Two product models developed using MAPTool are shown. Finally, we conclude that providing designers with meaningful parameters based on the shape context proves to be very promising.