Early Results from 3DESS: A 3D Engineering Shape Search System

Estimates suggest that more than 75 % of engineering design activity comprises reuse of previous design knowledge to address a new design problem. This paper presents a brief overview of a novel approach to search for 3D models. The system is built on a client-server-database architecture. The client takes in the query input from the user along with his search preferences and passes it to the server. The server converts the shape input into feature vectors and a unique skeletal graph representation. Details of the algorithms to perform these steps are presented here. Principal advantages of our graph representation are: (i) it preserves geometry and topology of the query model, (ii) it is considerably smaller than the B-Rep graph, and (iii) it is insensitive to minor perturbations in shape, but sensitive enough to capture the major features of a shape. Critical database issues such as search system efficiency, semantic gap reduction and the subjectivity of the similarity definition are addressed. This paper reports our initial results in designing, implementing and running the shape search system. 1