Description

We have investigating geometric inconsistency, interaction and awareness problems in collaborative modeling context. In our thesis, a system architecture for collaborative geometric modeling has been proposed to address inconsistencies and adaptability problems for heteregeneous computational platform. Besides, in this environment the participants may work in different parts of the space and have distinct perspective viewing of the space.  A distributed interaction model and a group awareness model have been proposed to the system architecture.

The interaction model is responsable to control granularity of remote interaction  and to supply visual feeback, as effort to minimize network traffic, keeping  confortable interative process.  Meanwhile, maintaining workspace awareness becomes much more difficult, when participants do not share the same viwepoint.  Then,  the awareness model shares viewpoints and manipulation metaphors among all participants to increase the group awareness.

A prototype of a Collaborative 3D Geometric Modeling (CoMo) has been implemented to support temporally and geographically dispersed work teams. We present graphics solutions for enhancing individual interaction and 3D workspace awareness in CoMo, reusing several individual awareness mechanisms (3D metaphors) provided by the MTK.

An appropriate communication and distribution platform, based on CORBA, has been developed and implemented to support interation model, proposed to the system architecture. This prototype has been evaluated concerning with geometric consistency and responsiveness, according with human/computer interaction metrics adapted for collaborative context.

Papers

Thesis

• interaction with distribution platform (CORBA), and
• for sharing 3D metaphors.

This project was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).
We would like to thank Daniel Tost for hard work looking for solving problems in the 3D manipulation.