Mesh2Fab: Reforming Shapes for Material-specific Fabrication

TL;DR

This paper introduces a data-driven reshaping algorithm that modifies 3D models to better suit specific fabrication materials, considering both geometry and topology for improved material-specific manufacturing.

Contribution

It presents a novel method for automatically reforming 3D shapes to align with fabrication material requirements, including geometry and inter-part topology adjustments.

Findings

Effective reshaping for metal and wood materials

Produces models with specific part dimensions and junctions

Validated through user study

Abstract

As humans, we regularly associate shape of an object with its built material. In the context of geometric modeling, however, this interrelation between form and material is rarely explored. In this work, we propose a novel data-driven reforming (i.e., reshaping) algorithm that adapts an input multi-component model for a target fabrication material. The algorithm adapts both the part geometry and the inter-part topology of the input shape to better align with material specific fabrication requirements. As output, we produce the reshaped model along with respective part dimensions and inter-part junction specifications. We evaluate our algorithm on a range of man-made models and demonstrate non-trivial model reshaping examples focusing only on metal and wooden materials. We also appraise the output of our algorithm using a user study.