Supporting objects in voxel-based design environments

Abstract

Inspired from the idea of using voxels in the conceptual stages of architectural design, a synchronous collaborative design system, CoBlocks, was developed. This paper raises the problem that simply adopting the voxel representations would take voxels as graphic primitives and offer design operations at the voxel level. We introduced the object descriptor to group voxels to form higher-level semantic elements. A test of its efficacy is reported in this paper. The results indicate that the objects facilitated more discussions on high-level design issues and supported more effective design operations. This suggests designers can benefit from the use of objects in voxel-based design environment..