Development of a Novel Computer-aided Design Experiment Protocol for Studying Designer Behaviours

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is indispensable for modern engineering endeavors. The craft of creating CAD models requires extensive experience and expertise. Unfortunately, most traditional CAD training remains focused on declarative knowledge and not higher-level thinking. Studying expert usage could provide insights into the elements of effective CAD modelling. As the first step towards decoding CAD expertise, a novel experimental protocol was developed to capture and characterize designer actions during modeling. The study will serve as a foundation for future CAD design research. The protocol was tested with an experiment of 19 participants of varying skill levels. Event plot visualizations and hidden Markov Models revealed differences between two groups of performance-segmented participants, with the experts adopting a more consistent and organized modelling approach. Compared to existing methodologies, the automated processes developed for this study leverages automatic data collection and analysis to significantly reduce the time and effort required toperform design experimentsM.A.S