Spec2Fab

 

Spec2Fab: A Reducer-Tuner Model for Translating Specifications to 3D Prints

 
Desai Chen     David I.W. Levin     Piotr Didyk     Pitchaya Sitthi-Amorn     Wojciech Matusik

MIT CSAIL

SIGGRAPH 2013

 

3D-printed objects with various effects designed using our reducer-tuner model. Our generalized approach to fabrication enables an easy and intuitive design of objects with different material properties. On the left: a miniature of Earth with a prescribed deformation behavior. On the right: an optimized surface producing a caustic image under proper illumination as well as casting a shadow of a previously designed shape. Insets visualize an input to our system.

 

Abstract

 

Multi-material 3D printing allows objects to be composed of complex, heterogenous arrangements of materials. It is often more natural to define a functional goal than to define the material composition of an object. Translating these functional requirements to fabricable 3D prints is still an open research problem. Recently, several specific instances of this problem have been explored (e.g., appearance or elastic deformation), but they exist as isolated, monolithic algorithms. In this paper, we propose an abstraction mechanism that simplifies the design, development, implementation, and reuse of these algorithms. Our solution relies on two new data structures: a reducer tree that efficiently parameterizes the space of material assignments and a tuner network that describes the optimization process used to compute material arrangement. We provide an application programming interface for specifying the desired object and for defining parameters for the reducer tree and tuner network. We illustrate the utility of our framework by implementing several fabrication algorithms as well as demonstrating the manufactured results.

 




Citation

Desai Chen, David I.W. Levin, Piotr Didyk, Pitchaya Sitthi-Amorn, Wojciech Matusik
Spec2Fab: A reducer-tuner model for translating specifications to 3D prints
ACM Transactions on Graphics 32(4) (Proceedings SIGGRAPH 2013, Anaheim, CA), 2013

  @article{Chen2013,
	author	  = {Chen, Desai and Levin, David I. W. and Didyk, Piotr and Sitthi-Amorn, Pitchaya and Matusik, Wojciech},
	title	  = {{Spec2Fab: A reducer-tuner model for translating specifications to 3D prints}},
	journal   = {ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings SIGGRAPH 2013, Anaheim, CA)},
	year      = {2013},
	volume    = {32},
	number    = {4},
	pages     = {135:1--135:10}
  }


Paper

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Video

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Presentation

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Code and Data

CODE (3 MB)
DATA (10 MB)
External preprocessing code for facet caustics (GPL licence) (160KB)