Research

NewCAD

Beyond Icons:
How Many Buttons Do We Need?

University of Kansas
2025

In collaboration with:

James Park, PhD
Assistant Professor
School of Architecture
Montana State University

Since the 1970s, computer-aided design (CAD) systems have become central to architecture and engineering, offering precision modeling and vast libraries of predefined functions (McCullough 2006). These tools transformed professional practice, yet their rigid structures continue to constrain designers. The question remains: how many functions are enough? Rhino 8, for example, provides 1,076 functions across 59 classes and 111 toolbars, including 108 commands for curves alone. Despite this breadth, designers often need unavailable operations, forcing them to chain commands, program custom scripts, or rely on developers—costly and inefficient solutions. This work introduces an alternative: a rule-based system grounded in shape grammar formalism (Stiny 2006) and implemented through the Shape Machine (Hong 2024; Hong and Economou 2023). By recording and interpreting designers’ actions as shape rules, the system generates reusable custom functions without coding. It reframes CAD from overloaded interfaces toward adaptive, designer-driven environments.