Collaborative Design Principles From Minecraft With Applications to Multi-User Computer-Aided Design

Author(s):  
David J. French ◽  
Brett Stone ◽  
Thomas T. Nysetvold ◽  
Ammon Hepworth ◽  
W. Edward Red

Synchronous collaborative (“multi-user”) computer-aided design (CAD) is a current topic of academic and industry interest due to its potential to reduce design lead times and improve design quality through enhanced collaboration. Minecraft, a popular multiplayer online game in which players can use blocks to design structures, is of academic interest as a natural experiment in a collaborative 3D design of very complex structures. Virtual teams of up to 40 simultaneous designers have created city-scale models with total design times in the thousands of hours. Using observation and a survey of Minecraft users, we offer insights into how virtual design teams might effectively build, communicate, and manage projects in a multi-user CAD design environment. The results suggest that multi-user CAD will be useful and practical in an engineering setting with several simultaneous contributors. We also discuss the effects of multi-user CAD on team organization, planning, design concurrency, communication, and mentoring.

Author(s):  
David J. French ◽  
Brett Stone ◽  
Thomas T. Nysetvold ◽  
Ammon Hepworth ◽  
W. Edward Red

Real-time simultaneous multi-user (RSM) computer-aided design (CAD) is currently a major area of research and industry interest due to its potential to reduce design lead times and improve design quality through enhanced collaboration. Minecraft, a popular multi-player online game in which players use blocks to design structures, is of academic interest as a natural experiment in collaborative 3D design of very complex structures. Virtual teams of up to forty simultaneous designers have created city-scale models with total design times in the thousands of hours. Using observation and a survey of Minecraft users, we offer insights into how virtual design teams might effectively build, communicate, and manage projects in an RSM CAD design environment. The results suggest that RSM CAD will be useful and practical in an engineering setting with several simultaneous contributors. We also discuss the potential effects of RSM CAD on team organization, planning, design concurrency, communication, and mentoring.


Author(s):  
Kazuhiro Muramatsu ◽  
Sonam Wangmo

Design education is important at technical universities and colleges. In general, real product design requires collaborative work. In this chapter, the authors discuss collaborative design education. An A360 cloud platform on Autodesk's 3D computer-aided design “AutoCAD” is adopted to illustrate a collaborative design activity implemented in the Engineering Graphics class offered at the College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan. By using A360 cloud, students can share a 3D model with group members. Based on feedback received, students can modify the initial model, share it, print, and discuss the modified object with members. This collaborative work allows students to create enhanced 3D design objects while engaged in discussions and interactions. The authors also discuss some difficulties encountered during the collaborative process and offer recommendations and future research ideas.


2005 ◽  
Vol 127 (12) ◽  
pp. 32-34
Author(s):  
Jean Thilmany

This article discusses that how mechanical engineers will pair their already-familiar computer-aided design software with not-so-familiar three-dimensional (3D) displays for true 3D design. This is in accordance to a number of vendors' intent on supplying the newfangled computer monitors, within the next two decades. Although some of the devices are already on the market, affordable 3D monitors and displays seem to be more than a decade away, according to one university professor at work on such a project. Widespread adoption is still hindered by factors such as cost, software availability, and lack of a mouse-like device needed to interact with what’s on screen. Over the past 25 years, mechanical engineers have witnessed evolutionary change in design methods-from pen and paper to two-dimensional software and now to 3-D computer-aided design. While software makers have stepped up with sleeker and faster modeling capabilities, visualization lags. Computer users two decades out will carry out all business, web surfing, and gaming on 3-D displays. That next generation may well find the very idea of 2-D monitors to be as dated as record albums seem to teenagers today.


Author(s):  
Konstantinas Stanislovas Danaitis ◽  
Ana Usovaitė

3D design technology is the basis for the modern computer graphics. AutoCAD 2015 is a powerful version of computer-aided design system. We can solve complex tasks, without which this instrument can’t be solved in general. Using 3D design technology we not only save time working with a drawing. The geometric models are the foundation of the design basics, for working with drawing we can create projections, footnotes, sections and other modern graphics elements. AutoCAD can use and process the data from the model. This progressive design technology includes all parts of the design, starting from machine details, furniture and finishing with architectural forms of complex object models.


Author(s):  
Scott Angster ◽  
Kevin Lyons ◽  
Peter Hart ◽  
Sankar Jayaram

Abstract The emergence of high performance computing has opened up new avenues for the design and analysis community. Integrated Product/Process Design techniques are allowing multi-functional teams to simultaneously optimize the design of a product. These techniques can be inhibited, however, due to software integration and data exchange issues. The work outlined in this paper focuses on these issues as they relate to the design and analysis of electro-mechanical assemblies. The first effort of this work is the creation of an open environment, called the Open Assembly Design Environment. The goal of this environment is to integrate the otherwise disparate assembly design tools using a central control system and a common set of data. These design tools include virtual reality based design systems, computer-aided design systems, design for assembly systems and process planning systems. This paper outlines the overall goals of the project, presents the architecture designed for the system, describes the interfaces developed to integrate the systems, and discusses the data representation requirements for a system integrating a virtual reality system with computer-aided design systems.


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