The main current evolutions in industrial design research are the following : 1 The computerization of the early design phases 2 Consumer and user centered design with in particular emotional design 3 The concurrent engineering, with collaborative work supporting tools Our goal is to modelize the preliminary phases of traditional industrial design process, in order to build new computer aided d...

A vector valued interpolation scheme for a pentagon is described which is compatible with surface patches which have a rectangular domain of definition. Such a scheme could be useful in computeraided geometric design problems, where a pentagonal patch occurs within a rectangular patch framework.

The physical environments in which design collaborations take place provide many affordances, which enable interactions to occur both seamlessly and (in most cases) successfully. Physical collaboration is also facilitated through many aspects of the design process. Virtual design collaboration on the other hand, while successful at achieving the direct representation of activity around the arte...