3-Draw: a three dimensional computer aided design tool

3-Draw is a tool for computer-aided design targeted at the early concept-forming stages of design. 3-Draw is intended to preserve the benefits of paper and pencil while taking advantage of the computer to develop, manipulate, and display 3-D representations of objects interactively. Designers using 3-Draw sketch out their initial ideas directly in three dimensions, using the computer to display objects in perspective and undergoing real-time motion. The hardware consists of two six-degrees-of-freedom sensors and a Silicon Graphics IRIS-4D/70GT graphics workstation. One sensor is configured to control an object´s position and orientation. The other sensor is a multiconfigurable 3-D drawing/editing tool. Since the sketching is done directly in 3-D, the computer can generate limitless perspective views of models and the designer does not need to perform the image projection mentally