Patent US5940082 - System and method for distributed collaborative drawing

United States Patent [w]

Brinegar et al.

[54] SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATIVE DRAWING

[76] Inventors: David Brinegar, 1508 Oxford St.,
Berkeley, Calif. 94143-0450; David
Hingston, 47 Eastwood Dr., San
Francisco, Calif. 94112

[21] Appl. No.: 08/798,280
[22] Filed: Feb. 14, 1997

[51] Int. CI.6 G06F 3/00

[52] U.S. CI 345/442

[58] Field of Search 345/440, 441,

345/442, 443

[56] References Cited

U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS

5,206,934 4/1993 Naef, III 395/200

5,231,697 7/1993 Yamada 395/142

5,237,649 8/1993 Yamada 395/143

5,309,555 5/1994 Akins et al 395/157

5,392,400 2/1995 Berkowitz et al 395/200

5,425,109 6/1995 Saga et al 382/187

5,442,788 8/1995 Bier 395/650

5,581,702 12/1996 McArdle et al 395/200.04

5,608,872 3/1997 Schwatz et al 395/200.04

5,717,879 2/1998 Moran et al 395/339

5,726,669 3/1998 Obata et al 345/2

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Stults, "Experimental Uses of Video to Support Design Activities" (Palo Alto Research Center, Dec. 1988, copyright Xerox Corporation).

Tang, et al., "VideoDraw: A Video Interface for Collaborative Drawing" (System Sciences Laboratory, Palo Alto, California).

Primary Examiner—Phu K. Nguyen
Assistant Examiner—Cliff N. Vo

Attorney, Agent, or Firm—Gary S. Williams; Pennie &
Edmonds LLP

[57] ABSTRACT

The present invention pertains to a system and method for managing a real-time distributed collaborative drawing activity. A community of collaborators associated with client computers are connected via a communications link with a server computer. Each collaborator contributes to the realtime design of a shared drawing that is displayed in each collaborator's virtual whiteboard. Contributions to the shared drawing as well as communications between the collaborators are transmitted to the server computer. The server computer broadcasts the communication to each of the collaborators engaged in the design activity. Each user has a set of drawing tools that are used to generate a variety of drawing strokes that edit the shared drawing. A curve generating procedure is used to capture the manner in which the user draws the stroke in order to emulate a selected drawing tool. A compact representation of the user's stroke is generated and transmitted to each collaborator.

27 Claims, 13 Drawing Sheets