Reasoning About Sketches Using Context, Domain Knowledge, and Interaction with the User

Visual information can be communicated using informal sketches of the sort used by people in design conversations. These sketches can be captured using TabletPCs, however, they can be hard or impossible to understand without additional context, domain knowledge, and interaction with the user. We illustrate the utility of these components with examples and then describe a system, midos, that uses these components to reason about a simple mechanical design.