Fabrication-Aware Strip-Decomposable Quadrilateral Meshes

TL;DR

This paper introduces an interactive method for designing and editing strip-decomposable quadrilateral meshes aligned with user-defined directions, facilitating fabrication processes like 3D printing of complex shell surfaces.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to generate and modify SDQ meshes with aligned strips, preserving their decomposability and fabrication properties.

Findings

Method successfully generates aligned SDQ meshes

Enables editing while maintaining strip decomposability

Applied to robotic 3D printing of shell surfaces

Abstract

Strip-decomposable quadrilateral (SDQ) meshes, i.e., quad meshes that can be decomposed into two transversal strip networks, are vital in numerous fabrication processes; examples include woven structures, surfaces from sheets, custom rebar, or cable-net structures. However, their design is often challenging and includes tedious manual work, and there is a lack of methodologies for editing such meshes while preserving their strip decomposability. We present an interactive methodology to generate and edit SDQ meshes aligned to user-defined directions, while also incorporating desirable properties to the strips for fabrication. Our technique is based on the computation of two coupled transversal tangent direction fields, integrated into two overlapping networks of strips on the surface. As a case study, we consider the fabrication scenario of robotic non-planar 3D printing of freefrom shell surfaces and apply the presented methodology to design and fabricate non-planar print paths.