MARK-IT: A Marking User Interface For Cutting Decomposition Time

Proceedings, 13th International Meshing Roundtable, Williamsburg, VA, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND #2004-3765C, pp.231-242, September 19-22 2004

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

13th International Meshing Roundtable
Willimasburg, Virginia, USA
September 19-22, 2004

Nicholas C. Yang and Andrew S. Forsberg
Brown University, Providence, RI, U.S.A.
{nyang, asf}@cs.brown.edu

Jason F. Shepherd and Ricardo M. Garcia
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.
{jfsheph, ricgarc}@sandia.gov

Karl G. Merkley
Elemental Technologies, Inc., American Fork, UT, U.S.A.
karl@elemtech.com

Abstract
We present Mark-It, a marking user interface that reduced the time to decompose a set of CAD models exhibiting a range of decomposition problems by as much as fifty percent. Instead of performing about 50 mesh decomposition operations using a conventional UI, Mark-It allows users to perform the same operations by drawing 2D marks in the context of the 3D model. The motivation for this study was to test the potential of a marking user interface for the decomposition aspect of the meshing process. To evaluate Mark-It, we designed a user study that consisted of a brief tutorial of both the non-marking and marking UIs, performing the steps to decompose four models contributed to us by experienced meshers at Sandia National Laboratories, and a post-study debriefing to rate the speed, preference, and overall learnability of the two interfaces. Our primary contributions are a practical user interface design for speeding-up mesh decomposition and an evaluation that helps characterize the pros and cons of the new user interface.

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