Motion Exploration of Articulated Product Concepts in Interactive Sketching Environment

Abstract

In the early stages of engineering design, it is essential to know how a product behaves, especially how it moves. As designers must keep adjusting the motion until it meets the intended requirements, this process is often repetitive and time-consuming. Although the physics behind these motions is usually based on simple equations, manually working through them can be tedious and inefficient. To ease this burden, some tasks are now handled by computers. One common method involves converting hand-drawn sketches into models using CAD or CAE software. However, this approach can be time- and resource-intensive. Additionally, product sketches are usually best understood only by the designers who created them. Others may struggle to interpret them correctly, relying heavily on intuition and prior experience. Since sketches are static, they fail to show how a product moves, limiting their usefulness. This paper presents a new approach that addresses these issues by digitising the natural act of sketching. It allows designers to create, simulate, and test the motion of mechanical concepts in a more interactive way. An application was developed to evaluate this method, focusing on user satisfaction and mental workload during a design task. The results showed a 77% reduction in cognitive effort compared to traditional methods, with users reporting high satisfaction. Future work will focus on expanding this approach from 2D (planar) to full 3D (spatial) design environments, enabling more complex product concept development.