Case Study of Haptic Methods for Selection on CAD Models

Our goal is to investigate new interaction techniques, using the haptic modality for CAD applications. An important issue in CAD systems is the modification of the Boundary Representation (B-Rep) of 3D objects. However, this fundamental task is only possible if a geometric element (vertex, edge, face) has already been selected. This paper focuses on several haptic selection methods to solve specific geometric constraints (differentiation of topological entities, variable density of the geometry, concavities) during the edition of a CAD model. Evaluation studies are carried out to compare the impact of these haptic methods on user performance. The results of these experiments are used to create a global haptic selection method for CAD editing.