Computational Challenges in Designing Virtual Models for Fabrication (Guest Talk)

3D printing is considered a disruptive technology with potentially tremendous socioeconomic impact. In recent years, additive manufacturing technologies have made significant progress in terms of both sophistication and price; they have advanced to a point where devices now feature high-resolution, full-color, and multi-material printing. Nonetheless, they remain of limited use, given the lack of efficient algorithms and intuitive tools that can be used to design and model 3D-printable content.

My vision is to unleash the full potential of 3D printing technology with the help of computational methods. In our research, we are working to invent and develop new computational techniques for intuitively designing virtual 3D models and bringing them to the real world. Given the digital nature of the process, three factors play a central role: computational models and efficient representations that facilitate intuitive design, accurate and fast simulation techniques, and intuitive authoring tools for physically realizable objects and materials.

In this talk, I will present several projects that demonstrate our recent efforts in working toward this goal, structured according to basic object properties, and the lessons learned from working over several years with various 3D printers.