Abstract
Digital documents assembled of different components like text, images, video, audio and 3D models are supported today by many distributed applications. This paper presents a new approach to retrieve 3D models as part of digital documents using content-based image retrieval functionality. To find a 3D model best fitting the user's query, shape information is extracted from the retrieved models and comparing shape images with the graphical user input generates a score. A distributed database environment with a WWW interface is presented and used as a generic implementation platform for this technique. The new retrieval method for 3D geometry is then described by extending the generic architecture in two steps with a server-side module and an interactive client display. It is outlined how this method can be used for partial geometry download of 3D models in digital libraries.

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