Capable but Not Scalable: Requirements and Interaction Costs of Building Multi-View CAD Datasets for Design Research

Abstract

Transforming CAD models into consistent multi-view image datasets is increasingly important for AI-driven product design research, yet existing workflows can impose substantial burdens on researchers without programming expertise. We examine this challenge from a human-computer interaction (HCI) perspective by analyzing ten reported rendering practices and deriving fourteen requirements spanning dataset quality, visual consistency, and user interaction. We then assess eleven development- and design-oriented tools against an illustrative task involving STEP models, interpreting potential interaction costs through the cognitive dimensions framework. Our analysis reveals a gap between technical capability and practical scalability: programming-based frameworks offer flexible automation but require coding expertise, while graphical design tools provide accessible functionality yet retain repetitive per-product operations. No assessed workflow combines a low programming threshold, low repetition viscosity, and flexible protocol configuration. Based on these findings, we propose design directions including reusable rendering presets, collection-wide previews and corrections, mixed-initiative orientation assignment, and automatic provenance recording. This work reframes CAD dataset generation as an end-user interaction design problem and establishes requirements for more accessible, scalable dataset creation tools.