JP2005316881A - Program for drawing retrieval, drawing retrieval device, and method for displaying drawing retrieval result - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To improve the identity of each drawing at the time of listing a drawing retrieval result. <P>SOLUTION: A thumbnail image of each drawing is registered in a thumbnail DB 14. A text included in each drawing and information of the position in the drawing of the text are registered in a text information DB 16. A retrieval processing part 18 determines a drawing including a retrieval keyword inputted from a user based on data of the text information DB 16. A retrieval result display processing part 20 acquires the thumbnail image of the retrieved drawing from the thumbnail DB 14, determines the position of the retrieval keyword in the drawing, and emphasizes and displays the position of the retrieval keyword in the thumbnail image. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a technique for drawing search, and more particularly to display of search results.

  In recent years, design by CAD (Computer Aided Design) has become mainstream, and drawing data is created and stored using a CAD application, and is shared and reused.

  In order to reuse drawing data, a system for searching for desired drawing data is important. Conventionally, as such a drawing search system, there is a system for performing keyword search for text data included in drawing data. In such a system, as a method of presenting a search result, there is a method of displaying a list of file names of each searched drawing data or displaying a list of creation date and other attribute information together. However, with this method, it is impossible to determine whether a drawing is desired until the file of each drawing shown in the list display is opened with a CAD application and the contents are confirmed. As an improvement measure against this, there is also known a method in which thumbnail images (reduced images) of respective drawings are prepared, and thumbnail images of searched drawings are displayed as a list as a search result list. This method has an advantage that each drawing can be easily identified as compared with a method in which only the file name and attribute information are displayed because the outline of the drawing can be understood from the thumbnail image.

  Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-228561 allows a drawing data of each part to be searched by a part number of the part, displays a schematic diagram (thumbnail image) of each searched drawing, and allows a user to select a desired one. It is shown.

  Although not in the field of drawing search, there are techniques disclosed in Patent Documents 2 and 3 as conventional techniques related to thumbnail display and search result display.

  The system disclosed in Patent Document 2 is a system that displays a list of thumbnail images of general documents and images, manages attribute information such as the creation date and time of the original document in association with the thumbnail image, and displays the thumbnail image. When this is done, the corresponding attribute information is also displayed.

  The system disclosed in Patent Document 3 is a system that manages image data and text data obtained by character recognition for the image data in association with each other, and searches and displays the image data by keyword search for the text data. In this system, position information in the image of each text is obtained and registered in a database at the stage of character recognition for the image data. Then, the file name of the image data searched by the keyword search is displayed in a list, and the position information of each text registered in the database is displayed when the file (image data) selected by the user in the list is displayed. By referencing, the position of the text corresponding to the keyword in the image data is obtained, and the text portion is highlighted.

JP 2003-281204 A JP 2001-337994 A JP 11-328196 A

  A thumbnail image of a drawing is certainly useful in that it can know the rough contents of the drawing. However, when a large-sized design drawing is reduced to the size of a thumbnail image to be displayed on a computer display, a considerable amount of information is lost. Thus, a searched thumbnail image is displayed as in Patent Document 1 or the like. In some cases, it is difficult to identify a desired drawing by itself.

  Further, even when attribute information such as a file name is added to a thumbnail image and displayed as in the system of Patent Document 2, the identification property of the thumbnail image itself does not change, and thus the attribute information to be additionally displayed has poor identification property. It is difficult to identify a desired document.

  In the system of Patent Document 3, when image data selected from the search result list is displayed, the keyword used for the search is highlighted in the image, but the search result list itself is a file. Since this is a list of names, each document must be identified by a file name on the list display.

  The present invention provides a computer system, a drawing search means for searching a drawing including a given search keyword in a text portion, a position acquisition means for determining a position of the search keyword in the drawing searched by the drawing search means, A keyword-enhanced thumbnail image that highlights a portion of the search keyword in the thumbnail image based on the thumbnail image of the drawing searched by the drawing search unit and the position information of the search keyword obtained by the position acquisition unit And a program for functioning as an enhanced thumbnail creating means for displaying search results.

  In a preferred aspect of the present invention, when the highlighted thumbnail creating means includes a plurality of different search keywords in the text portion of the searched drawing, the different search keywords are displayed in different display forms as the keyword emphasized thumbnail image. Create an image that is highlighted.

  In another preferred aspect, the computer system is a position specifying means for receiving specification of a desired appearance position of a search keyword in the drawing, and a means for giving a search score to each drawing searched by the drawing searching means. The scoring means for obtaining a value taking into account the distance between the position of the search keyword in the drawing and the desired appearance position as the search score, and the keyword of each drawing created by the emphasized thumbnail creation means There is provided a program for further functioning as search result creation means for creating search result list screen information obtained by sorting highlighted thumbnail images according to the score given by the score assignment means.

  The best mode for carrying out the present invention (hereinafter referred to as “embodiment”) will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the overall configuration of a drawing retrieval system according to the present invention. In FIG. 1, a drawing DB (database) 10 is a database in which drawing data of each drawing created by a CAD application (not shown) is registered.

  The search information creation unit 12 is a functional module that creates data for a search service from each drawing data in the drawing DB 10. In the present embodiment, the search information creation unit 12 takes out drawing data to be searched from the drawing DB 10, and uses the drawing data as thumbnails for the search results as data for the search service. An image, text data in a drawing used for search, and information on its position are created.

  First, in thumbnail image creation, the search information creation unit 12 creates a drawing image based on the drawing data, and creates a thumbnail image by reducing the drawing image. The image may be reduced at a predetermined reduction rate (in this case, the thumbnail image size is proportional to the drawing size), or may be reduced to a predetermined size (in this case, the reduction rate is It may vary depending on the size of the drawing). Regardless of which reduction method is used, the search information creation unit 12 knows the reduction rate of the image when creating the thumbnail image.

  The thumbnail image created in this way is registered in the thumbnail DB 14. In the thumbnail DB 14, image data files of created thumbnail images are registered, and a table as shown in FIG. 2 is stored as management information of the image data files. In this table, “drawing ID” is the identification information of the drawing indicated by the thumbnail image, and uniquely indicates the drawing data in the drawing DB 10. In the “thumbnail file” item, information such as a file name or a path for calling an image data file of the thumbnail image is registered.

  Further, in the process of creating text data and information on the position thereof, the search information creating unit 12 first extracts a text object from various objects included in the drawing data. The text object includes data (text data) of text (character string) arranged in the drawing and position data indicating the position of the text in the drawing. The text data and position data are extracted from each text object extracted from. Further, the search information creating unit 12 creates the data of the text position in the thumbnail image of the drawing by converting the position data using the image reduction ratio at the time of creating the thumbnail image. The text data thus obtained and the position data of the text in the thumbnail image are registered in the text information DB 16.

  An example of data registered in the text information DB 16 is shown in FIG. In this example, a record including each data item of “drawing ID”, “text”, and “position” is created for each text object. In the “drawing ID” item, a drawing ID of a drawing including the text object is registered. In the item “text”, text data extracted from the text object is registered. In the “position” item, position data in the thumbnail image of the text object is registered. FIG. 3 illustrates a case where a set of position coordinates in the thumbnail image of two points on the diagonal line of the rectangular area where the text is arranged is used as the “position” of the text object. Note that if the coordinates normalized by setting the vertical and horizontal lengths of the drawing to 1 are used as the position coordinates of the text object, the information of the position coordinates can be used regardless of the size of the thumbnail image. It can also be used as information on the position of the text object in the drawing itself.

  The data illustrated in FIG. 3 is for managing the correspondence between the text in the drawing and its position in the thumbnail image. In addition to this, as a search index table, a table as shown in FIG. Is preferably created and registered in the text information DB 16. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of such an index table. In the index table of FIG. 4, each text extracted from each drawing data is registered as an individual index word. For each index word, “1” if the drawing indicated by the drawing ID includes the index word, If not included, a value of “0” is registered. By creating and using such an index table, a drawing including a search keyword input by the user can be searched at high speed.

  Returning to the description of FIG. The search processing unit 18 is a functional module that performs processing for a drawing search service for a user. The search processing unit 18 can provide a process for the search service as described below to a user on the Internet or an intranet in the form of a web page, a web service application, or the like.

  First, the search processing unit 18 provides a search condition designation screen 100 as illustrated in FIG. 5 and accepts input of search conditions from the user using this screen. This search condition designation screen 100 includes a keyword designation field 110 and a drawing orientation designation field 120.

  The keyword specification column 110 shows a keyword column 112 for inputting a search keyword. In the case of a configuration that accepts a plurality of search keywords, a plurality of keyword columns 112 are provided, and the second and subsequent keyword columns 112 have a logical relationship with the search keyword input in the previous keyword column 112 (for example, is an AND condition? A logical condition column 114 for designating whether the condition is an OR condition).

  Further, in the vicinity of each keyword column 112, a position specifying button 116 for calling a screen for specifying where in the drawing the search keyword input in the keyword column 112 is to be displayed is arranged. ing. When the user selects the position specifying button 116 by an operation such as clicking the mouse, a position specifying screen 200 as shown in FIG. 6 is provided to the user. The user operates a pointing device such as a mouse on the drawing outline image 210 shown on the screen 200 to move the cursor 212 to a position where the search keyword is desired to appear. Select the cursor position. Then, when the selected position is designated as the keyword appearance position, the OK button 220 may be pressed with an operation of a mouse or the like. If the cancel button 222 is pressed, the specified appearance position can be canceled. It is not essential to specify the appearance position for the search keyword.

  Information on the appearance position designated in this way can be used for ranking the drawings picked up by the keyword search. That is, in many cases, the user remembers as to what kind of text there was in the drawing he / she wants, and in such a case, the appearance position of the search keyword can be designated. Since the drawing whose position of the search keyword is closer to the appearance position specified by the user is more likely to be the drawing that the user desires, the position of the search keyword and the appearance position specified for the searched drawing can be considered. Can be scored (ranked) according to the distance to

  The drawing orientation designation field 120 of the search condition designation screen 100 includes radio buttons 122 and 124 for designating whether the orientation of the drawing desired by the user is vertical or horizontal. The specified drawing orientation can be used to score the retrieved drawings. That is, if the orientation of the drawing searched by the keyword search matches the designated orientation, the score is higher for that drawing than when the drawing does not match the designated orientation. Note that designation of the orientation of the drawing is not essential, and if there is no designation, the orientation of the drawing is not considered when calculating the score. For example, when the other conditions are the same, the score decreases in the order of matching with the specified direction, not specifying, and not matching with the specified direction.

  After specifying the search keyword, its appearance position, drawing orientation, and other conditions as described above, when the user presses the OK button 130, the search processing unit 18 executes a search according to the conditions. In this search process, the search processing unit 18 obtains the drawing ID of the drawing including the designated search keyword from the data registered in the text information DB 16. If the search condition is specified by a logical expression of a plurality of search keywords, a drawing that satisfies the logical expression is searched. The search processing unit 18 passes the drawing ID of each drawing searched in this way and information on the search keyword used for the search to the search result display processing unit 20. The search processing unit 18 also passes information on the appearance position of each search keyword specified by the user and information on the orientation of the drawing to the search result display processing unit 20.

  The search result display processing unit 20 creates a search result list display screen based on such information and provides it to the user. For this processing, the search result display processing unit 20 includes two functional modules, a keyword position acquisition unit 22 and a thumbnail enhancement unit 24.

  The keyword position acquisition unit 22 searches the registered data (see FIG. 3) of the text information DB 16 for each drawing obtained by the search by using the drawing ID of the drawing and the search keyword, and the search keyword in the thumbnail image of the drawing. Get position data for. When there are a plurality of search keywords, this position acquisition process is performed for each.

  Then, the thumbnail emphasizing unit 24 acquires a thumbnail image corresponding to the searched drawing ID from the thumbnail DB 14, and colors a portion (rectangular region in the example of FIG. 3) indicated by the position data in the thumbnail image. For example, the portion indicated by the position data is emphasized by changing it to a predetermined display form. When there are a plurality of search keywords, it is also preferable to change a display form such as a color used for emphasis for each search keyword. The search result display processing unit 20 creates a keyword-enhanced thumbnail image in which the keyword portion is emphasized by the above-described enhancement process for each searched drawing, and generates a search result list display screen in which these are arranged. .

  When the search result display processing unit 20 of the present embodiment generates the search result list display screen, the search result display processing unit 20 assigns a score to each drawing of the search result, and arranges the thumbnail images of the drawings in descending order of the score. The score increases as the distance between the keyword appearance position specified by the user and the actual search keyword in the drawing decreases, and the orientation of the drawing specified by the user matches the orientation of the drawing. The value is calculated based on a formula that increases the value. This calculation formula is obtained in advance through experiments or the like, and a program for executing this calculation formula is incorporated as a function of the search result display processing unit 20. When a plurality of search keywords are specified, the score is calculated based on a function using the distance for each search keyword as a parameter. Although the score is obtained from the position and orientation here, a considerable effect can be expected even in a system that obtains the score based only on the position. Further, not only the score calculation based on the position and the orientation as described above, but also the score calculation used in the conventional general keyword search may be used together to obtain a total score.

  FIG. 7 shows an example of the search result list display screen 300 created in this way. On the list display screen 300, thumbnail images 310-1, 2,... Of the searched drawings are displayed side by side in the order of scores. In each thumbnail image 310, a search keyword portion 312 is highlighted. The search keyword display field 302 of the list display screen 300 shows which search keyword is highlighted in which display form. This shows, for example, the value of the search keyword and the color used to highlight the search keyword. When there are a plurality of search keywords used for the search, the display form is exemplified for each search keyword. Further, the appearance position 320 of the designated search keyword and the orientation 322 of the drawing, which are the basis for determining the arrangement order of the list display, are also displayed.

  The user can know where the search keyword exists in each searched drawing by using such a list display screen 300. Such information is useful information when the user identifies a desired drawing. Further, in this embodiment, the searched drawings are ranked based on the position of the search keyword and the orientation of the drawings, and the thumbnail images of each drawing are arranged and displayed according to the ranking, so that the user matches his / her desire. It can be confirmed in order from the drawings that are likely to be present.

  Each thumbnail image 310 is set with a link to drawing data in the drawing DB 10, and when the user selects a desired drawing on the list display screen 300, the corresponding drawing data is called and displayed. Can do. It is also preferable to display the file name of drawing data and other attribute information together for each thumbnail image 310.

  In the above example, the text data and the position data are registered in the text information DB 16 for each text object included in the drawing data. In general, it is considered that text objects containing very long character strings are not included in the drawing, so this method is sufficient, but when considering that there are text objects containing long character strings, It is necessary to take measures accordingly. For this purpose, a technique used in a search field such as a conventional full-text search may be used. That is, for example, by applying a technique such as the n-gram method to the text in each text object extracted from the drawing data, an index table is created using the substrings of the text appearing in each text object as index words, The search may be performed using this. Further, in this case, for each partial sequence extracted from the text object, the partial sequence is determined from the position information of the text object and the information indicating which position range of the entire character string of the object is in the partial sequence. By obtaining the position in the thumbnail image (or in the drawing) and registering it in the table as shown in FIG. 3, the range of the substring corresponding to the search keyword can be highlighted.

  In the above example, the user is allowed to specify the position where the search keyword should appear, and this is used to rank the search results. In addition to this, the user is allowed to specify the search keyword appearance range. A method of narrowing down only to drawings in which a search keyword appears is also possible. For this, for example, a position designation screen 400 as shown in FIG. 8 is provided to the user. The drawing outline image 410 shown on the screen 400 is divided into six areas, and the user selects a range 412 in which the search keyword is desired to appear by using a mouse or the like. Then, by pressing an OK button 420, the range can be designated as a desired keyword appearance range. The search result display processing unit 20 selects and displays only the search keyword within the desired appearance range from the drawings of the search results obtained by the search processing unit 18 on the search result list display screen.

  The drawing retrieval system described above can be realized by causing a general-purpose computer system to execute a program that describes the function of each functional module.

1 is a functional block diagram showing an overall configuration of a drawing retrieval system according to the present invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the data registered into thumbnail DB. It is a figure which shows the example of the data registered into text information DB. It is a figure which shows an example of the data content of index data. It is a figure which shows an example of the screen for search condition designation | designated. It is a figure which shows an example of a position designation screen. It is a figure which shows an example of the list display screen of a search result. It is a figure which shows another example of a position designation screen.

Explanation of symbols

  10 drawing DB, 12 search information creation unit, 14 thumbnail DB, 16 text information DB, 18 search processing unit, 20 search result display processing unit, 22 keyword position acquisition unit, 24 thumbnail enhancement unit.

Claims (7)

Computer system
A drawing search means for searching for a drawing including the given search keyword in the text portion;
Position acquisition means for determining the position of the search keyword in the drawings searched by the drawing search means;
A keyword-enhanced thumbnail image that highlights a portion of the search keyword in the thumbnail image based on the thumbnail image of the drawing searched by the drawing search unit and the position information of the search keyword obtained by the position acquisition unit Creating highlighted thumbnails for display of search results,
Program to function as.   The emphasized thumbnail creating means creates an image that highlights different search keywords in different display forms as the keyword emphasized thumbnail images when a plurality of different search keywords are included in the text portion of the searched drawing. The program according to claim 1. The computer system;
Position designation means for accepting designation of a desired appearance position of a search keyword in the drawing;
A means for assigning a search score to each drawing searched by the drawing search means, wherein the search score is a value that takes into account the distance between the position of the search keyword in the drawing and the desired appearance position Scoring means for seeking,
Search result creation means for creating search result list screen information obtained by sorting the keyword emphasized thumbnail images of each drawing created by the emphasized thumbnail creation means according to the score given by the score assigning means;
The program according to claim 1, further functioning as a program. The computer system;
A text information database that stores, for each drawing, the text data of the text portion and the position data of the text portion in the drawing in association with each text portion included in the drawing;
And further function as
The drawing search means obtains the search keyword including the search keyword from the text data of each drawing registered in the text information database, obtains a drawing corresponding to the obtained text data as a search result,
The position acquisition means obtains position data associated with the text data obtained by the drawing search means as including the search keyword from the text information database.
The program according to any one of claims 1 to 3. The computer system;
The text object is extracted from the drawing data of each given drawing, the text data and the position information of the object in the drawing are extracted from the extracted text object, and the position data of the text object obtained based on the position information And means for storing the text data in a text information database in association with each other as information of a text part included in the drawing,
The program according to claim 4, further functioning as: A drawing search means for searching for a drawing including a given search keyword in a text part;
Position acquisition means for determining the position of the search keyword in the drawing searched by the drawing search means;
A keyword-enhanced thumbnail image that highlights a portion of the search keyword in the thumbnail image based on the thumbnail image of the drawing searched by the drawing search unit and the position information of the search keyword obtained by the position acquisition unit Creating thumbnails that are used to display search results,
A drawing retrieval apparatus comprising: In a drawing search system for searching for a drawing including a search keyword in a text data portion and displaying a thumbnail image of the searched drawing,
A drawing search result display method, wherein a thumbnail image showing the position of the search keyword in the drawing is displayed as a thumbnail image of the searched drawing.

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