Shadow plays in engineering: How was the innovative 2D sketch search invented?

The phenomenon is surely familiar: The engineer has a design in front of him and needs a certain component to complete it. He pictures the shape and color in his mind – but he just can't think of the name or doesn't know it. Moreover, diverse manufacturers describe the component differently or only in a language the engineer might not know. Then it's hard to know what to do.

Nature shows the way: A simple 2D image can be made from any 3D object by shadowing. If you could reverse the process, you would easily obtain a corresponding 3D object. Luckily there is the 2D sketch search for this purpose. In order to support engineers and purchasers in an easy way, CADENAS provides the innovative 2D sketch search as a part of the Geometric Similarity Search GEOsearch in its software solutions for Strategic Parts Management PARTsolutions as well as on the 3D CAD download portal PARTcommunity. This reverse approach is made possible as follows: Based on a simple 2D sketch, which doesn't require CAD, the system supplies a 3D model of the component that's being looked for as well as a selection of similar, relevant results.