Computational LEGO Technic Design
Hao Xu, Ka-Hei Hui, Chi-Wing Fu, Hao Zhang

TL;DR
This paper presents an automated system for generating LEGO Technic models from sketches, incorporating mechanical properties and symmetry, and validated through comparisons, expert evaluation, and user studies.
Contribution
It introduces a novel computational approach to automatically design LEGO Technic models from sketches, considering structural and mechanical constraints.
Findings
Generated models closely match input sketches.
System outperforms four baseline methods.
User-created models are physically realizable.
Abstract
We introduce a method to automatically compute LEGO Technic models from user input sketches, optionally with motion annotations. The generated models resemble the input sketches with coherently-connected bricks and simple layouts, while respecting the intended symmetry and mechanical properties expressed in the inputs. This complex computational assembly problem involves an immense search space, and a much richer brick set and connection mechanisms than regular LEGO. To address it, we first comprehensively model the brick properties and connection mechanisms, then formulate the construction requirements into an objective function, accounting for faithfulness to input sketch, model simplicity, and structural integrity. Next, we model the problem as a sketch cover, where we iteratively refine a random initial layout to cover the input sketch, while guided by the objective. At last, we…
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