Sketch based interfaces

Abstract

Freehand sketching is a natural and crucial part of everyday human interaction, yet is almost totally unsupported by current user interfaces. We are working to combine the flexibility and ease of use of paper and pencil with the processing power of a computer, to produce a user interface for design that feels as natural as paper, yet is considerably smarter. One of the most basic steps in accomplishing this is converting the original digitized pen strokes in a sketch into the intended geometric objects. In this paper we describe an implemented system that combines multiple sources of knowledge to provide robust early processing for freehand sketching.