Target Space Modeling - The end of 3D widgets

In today’s modeling tools, the graphical user interfaces are required to be accurate and intuitive to use. Most tools therefor rely on additional 3D-widgets (e.g., arrows or circles) that enable the user to operate towards a desired modeling result. In this paper we present, for the first time, a method that makes these widgets obsolete. We propose to use simple geometric primitives such as planes or spheres as low-dimensional subspaces, so called target spaces for the interaction. Instead of operating towards a modeling result, the user then directly steers the result. The target spaces suffice to be indicated to the user just as additional visual information. We verify by means of a user study that with our method it is now possible to develop accurate single-view GUIs without 3D-widgets that are highly intuitive to use.