Proposed WP4 projects:

• Constrained modelling
• Curve and surface generation in a kinematics sense
• Design by sketch
• Field visualization

Mathematics is the alphabet and the language needed when developing CAD/CAM software. The great progress accomplished in algebraic and differential geometry during the last century has a potential to significantly improve CAD/CAM. Partner Missler will focus on fundamental problems related to constraints in CAD, and how to use the remaining degrees of freedom efficiently in:

• The sketch problem for 2D-profiles, for constraints related to topology, angle, distances,...
• Kinematics and dynamics for 3D rigid bodies, for constraints related to contact, joints,...
• Surface generation, for constraints on points, curves, curvature, minimization of some tension, avoid oscillations, …

Also of interest is solid modelling for Boolean and topological operations between shapes, taking account of degeneracy.

The major challenges in 3D CAD visualization for partner SIM-A that are interesting to address are:

• To visualize huge CAD models real time with good frame rate and good quality on standard PCs;
• To visualize CAD models together with other 3D graphics data, e.g., terrain, seabed, reservoir data, weather conditions and more;
• To take advantage of new algorithms and 3D graphics hardware in real time CAD visualization;
• To scale the system to utilize existing hardware on high end systems, and at the same time have acceptable visual quality and rendering speed on standard systems;
• To run the systems multiplatform.

As an Applied Research Institute partner GT is investigating user-centered systems, which support design activities through expert systems within mixed reality environments. The goals are to provide innovative multimodal user interfaces combining sketches, gestures and speech among others, to accomplish design tasks in different contexts, ranging from small tablets to large-scale displays and immersive environments. It is also necessary to provide visualization of a very large amount of multidimensional graphical data that are made interactively available to a user looking for decision support, trying to achieve interactive visualization and intelligent complexity reduction for design activities.

Though not hiring for long-term projects, SINTEF will, as an Applied Research Institute and as the lead institution in the development of approximate implicitization, supply a lot of industry-related problems through its existing collaborations with companies: for short-term projects, secondments, contributions to training events, etc. The subject of their short-term projects will focus on two important aspects mentioned before: the multiresolution approach for implicitization methods and the use of GPUs (graphics processing units) for performance acceleration of algorithms based on the data streaming computational paradigm.