A software system to work with 3D models in cultural heritage research*

The availability of intuitive, user-friendly, and specialized software to work with 3D models of cultural heritage artefacts is as important as the availability of low-cost and robust data acquisition techniques for the adoption of digitized 3D models in cultural heritage research. The number of available high-quality digitized artefacts increases rapidly with the advent of low-cost 3D scanning technologies. Consequently the need for specialized software for cultural heritage research and practice on 3D models becomes more apparent. The lack of spatial measurement tools familiar to cultural heritage experts in traditional 3D modelling packages motivated us to create a simple, freely available, and extensible measurement tools system, CH Toolbox, that was designed exclusively for cultural heritage research. Here we discuss our design decisions regarding the interaction scheme of the software system and introduce three virtual counterparts of real-world spatial measurement tools, specifically the tape measure, the caliper, and the rim-chart.