Assessing the Effect of Incentive on Computer-Aided Design Intent

In today’s global and digital world, computer-aided design (CAD) can facilitate communication among design team members and make engineers more efficient. To meet the needs of the modern design team it is important that CAD models be formulated in a manner that is easily understood and that they can easily be altered. This work examines the role of an incentive to produce models quickly on feature selection, order, and organization (design intent). The role of design intent on model perception and the time required to alter a model is also investigated. The incentive to produce designs quickly is shown to have a negative effect on model attributes associated with proper design intent. Feature selection and organization are shown to affect model perception. The overall rating of a model is shown to be correlated with the time required to alter it. The importance of design intent on the perception of, and alteration time for, CAD models is shown.