Semantic Support for Computer-Human Interaction: Intuitive 3DVirtual Tools for Surface Deformation in CAD

Decision making is tightly related to the understanding of the design and manufacturing practices. In our previous work, we proposed an intuitive approach for geometric modeling in CAD, based on the integration of the user’s knowledge with virtual design tools. This approach facilitates the design of the CAD models using deformations. Deformations are done by the bias of a layered architecture which captures and represents the user’s knowledge at five semantic levels. The idea of using semantics was to provide high level modeling primitives for the data model in order to facilitate the design for a nonexpert user. This paper discusses the natural language representation of the user-specific knowledge by means of ontologies and its major contribution to the computer-human interaction. The approach is demonstrated on an industrial example of surface deformation for the design of a car parcel shelf.