Methods enabling interactive customization of fabricable objects by non-professionals

Abstract

This thesis addresses the problem of allowing casual users to customize the design of 3D printable objects while maintaining their validity. This work defines Fab Form as a representation formalizing the requirements for such designs: 1) the user should have a small number of intuitive parameters that allow customization; 2) the designs should maintain their valid state as 3D printable objects; and 3) the customization process should be interactive. To achieve these, my solution separates Fab Form evaluation into a precomputation stage and a runtime stage. Parts of the geometry and design validity (such as manufacturability) are evaluated and stored in the precomputation stage by adaptively sampling the design space. At runtime the remainder of the evaluation is performed. This allows interactive navigation in the valid regions of the design space using an automatically generated Web user interface. This approach is evaluated by converting several parametric models into corresponding Fab Forms.