We present a two-phase retrieval process for finding a target query within a set of 2-D line drawings, where the query is itself a line drawing. We also describe a logic-based matching method that uses unification and resolution to compare the semantic networks representing the spatial structure of two 2-D line drawings.
Retrieval of diagrams from an external memory (e.g., a computer-based library of diagrams) is a key problem in reasoning about diagrams. The task in our work assumes a computer-based library of 2-D line drawings, takes as input a representation of a 2-D line drawing as a query, and its desired output is a set of drawings retrieved from the library that are similar to the query (meaning that the target can be found within these sources based on a qualitative highlevel comparison). The goal of the work described in this paper is to develop a retrieval process and a matching procedure for enabling querying by example.