Priority-Based Geometric Constraint Satisfaction

Abstract

A well-constrained geometric system seldom occurs in practice, especially at the sketch-based initial conceptual design stage. Usually, it is either under- or overconstrained because design is a progressive process and it is difficult for a designer to specify all involved constraints in a consistent way. This paper presents a priority-based graph-reduction solution, in which each constraint is assigned with a priority to guide the reduction of a geometric constraint graph. The advantage of this method lies in its ability to find the optimal solutions to a geometric constraint system automatically, without requiring interactive intervention from users.