working together - a vr based approach for cooperative digital design review
In this paper we will present an approach how to support collaborative work between several experts in a design review based on CAD data. The design review is an important part of the design process of a new product, because its objective is to ensure the quality of the final product. During a design review several experts discuss the current state of the work, trying to locate errors in the design, develop improvements or find solutions for unsolved problems. It is evident that the quality of the achieved results of such a review is directly linked to the quality of the collaboration between the involved experts. Apart from social issues, efficient collaboration is heavily influenced by technical aspects, e.g. which kind of media is used. Since pure digital data representations of the design is commonplace today, new metaphors have to be developed which allow a group of people to work together simultaneously and intuitively on the same data model. In this paper we will introduce a virtual reality based approach to collaborative working in a design review scenario. Our work is based on a pen and paper paradigm, which allows people to sketch and draw their ideas as well as annotations on the digital model in the same way they would do it using a pen and a piece of paper. Furthermore we will show how private spaces can be realized and how the metaphor can be integrated in an overall framework, which is usable for digital design reviews.
vr design review collaboration user interface interaction