The Web as a visual design medium

Abstract

One of the main problems of the Web is its dominant textual characteristics. Since the natural way designers express their design ideas is in graphical form, accessing graphical information is a key issue. Since most of the design documents which are created today are products of CAD programs, our current research emphasis is upon indexing and retrieval of CAD documents on the Web. We present an approach for the utility and accessibility of CAD based design information. An approach for the use of CAD documents as a form of distributed case based design resource on the Web is proposed. Possibilities for employing case based CAD as a theoretical foundation for building large design resource bases on the Web are presented.