The Princeton Shape Retrieval and Analysis Group is working on developing a search engine for 2D and 3D CAD models. It works like this:
1. You sketch three representations, which could represent the front, top, and side views.
2. Optionally, you enter a text description to help narrow the search.
3. Click Search, and after some time the search engine returns a number of models.
The group describes how it works:
Shape distributions represent the shapes of 3D models as probability distributions sampled from shape functions measuring the geometric properties of the 3D models.
Reflective symmetry descriptors describe global symmetry properties of 3D shapes, which capture significant semantic features of many objects.
Spherical harmonics decompose 3D modesl into collections of functions defined on concentric spheres, using spherical harmonics to discard orientation information (phase) for each one.
You can try the 2D/3D search engine on some 50,000 models. As a bonus, it works with Netscape 4.0 or up, or equivalent, with Java v1.2 and Javascript enabled. Its accuracy partly depends on your sketching ability.
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