Intent

CAD applications often implement features or entities which are associative in nature, for example creating an extrude surface in AutoCAD 2011, by extruding a profile creates associative extrude surface. When you modify the profile the extruded surface will update itself to follow the profile. AutoCAD developers now can develop fascinating applications using new associative framework. There are APIs available in C++ as well as .NET to implement associative features in AutoCAD. You can download the latest ObjectARX to make use of associative framework. The associative framework in AutoCAD helps us to maintain relationship between objects. Relations are represented as hierarchical Networks of Objects, Actions and Dependencies between them. The core building blocks are: Action - Defines behavior or intelligence of application or feature. Dependency- Maintains associativity/ relations between objects and notifies changes on dependent objects. Network- The associative model Object- ...

Every action has equal and opposite reaction but today we need to know the intent behind an action to react properly. If you can understand the intent you are smart. So what’s the intent, how do you understand it? It’s a thought, an idea, a concept which can be derived from the context by reading between the lines or understanding the gestures. It’s understanding of “ I in you” . Understanding intent leads to providing the best solution for a problem, it leads to innovation. For example, searching for a restaurant on mobile phone has an intent and providing the best search result based on the context/location is innovation. In design paradigm every entity drawn on the canvas has some intent and it can be modified meaningfully only if one understand the intent of the entity. But when author is changed or the tools to modify these entities are changed, most often intents are lost. Capturing intent from actions develops knowledge base and developing knowledge base helps us understand the...