Cool technology, but really it's only streamlining the design process

A few weeks ago, I asked the question: "Where else is there to go for CAD technology?" and most of the suggestions seem to involve better ways of transferring ideas and visualisations from the mind to the screen. Whilst the latest generation of 3D solid modelling CAD is awesome to work with once the product has been defined, it still has to be created using a mish-mash of adding blocks and extruding lines.

However, this week I read of one interesting area of research into making this easier, and I'm sure there are many more going on behind closed doors. At NRC-IMTI in Canada, they're working on improving the way in which hand sketches on a tablet PC can be converted into CAD data. The idea is to allow a sketch drawn directly on the tablet PC's screen with a digital pencil to be intelligently cleaned-up to reflect the designer's true 2D intent. Roughly straight lines are transformed into truly straight ones, and corners are created even if the lines don't exactly intersect. Questions would try to piece together the designer's 3D intent too.

This is cool technology, but really it's only streamlining the design process, taking out the intermediate stage of entering a beermat sketch into a CAD system. This is a stage which might be a nuisance, but it isn't one which is a fundamental problem in the design process. I'm still looking for that revolutionary idea which will change the way we work.