Free-Hand Stroke Approximation for Intelligent Sketching Systems

Free-hand sketching is use de xtensively durin gt he early design phases as an important tool for conveying ideas, guiding the thought process, and serving as documentation (5). It also provides a natural way of interaction desirable in th ec ontext of E21 and intelligent design spaces. Unfortunately there is little computer suppor tf or sketching. The first step in building a sketch understanding system is generating more meaningful descriptions of free-hand strokes. We describe a system that take ss trokes described by a na rray of points along with timing data, and generates such concise descriptions in terms of geometric primitives such as circles, polylines, curves and their combinations.