Development of a sketching CAD system based on Parasolid

A sketching CAD system, dubbed Sketch3D, is developed by using Parasolid as the geometric kernel and using OpenGL as the rendering tool under the development environment of Visual C++. It offers a calligraphic interface, which emulates the traditional sketching design approach with paper and pencil, uses the intention capture mechanism to conjecture users¿ design intention, and applies the feature-based modeling method to construct 3D solid models. The system supports sketching strokes on the surface of the solid model, and uses the feature joining and cutting mechanism to establish complex solid models. Some main features of Sketch3D are: (1) it supports pen-based input; (2) it applies feature-based modeling method; (3) it can edit 3D models by gestures; (4) it can recognize intelligently the strokes as the basic geometrical entities. This paper first discusses the architecture, the main functions, and the realized methods of Sketch3D. Then some capabilities of Sketch3D have been compared to current CAD systems, such as Pro/E, UG, etc, and with some classical sketching systems, such as SKETCH, Teddy, etc.