Researchers at the IST developed a software system to design functional, mechanical objects for 3D printing

In Austria, researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology, Ran Zhang, Thomas Auzinger and Professor Bernd Bickel, team up with Adobe Researchers, Wilmot Li and Duygu Ceylan to develop a new software system. The latter would create and redesign fully 3D printed objects with the use of mechanical templates and desired shapes.

  The software system will be unveiled this summer at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles.

3 main features characterize the software system: flexibility of design, reuse of mechanical shapes and freedom of design.

Creators explain that the system allows users to retarget a given mechanical template to an input shape. Their optimization-in-the-loop approach generates a functional model that can be 3D printed.

With regards to mechanical shapes, co-author Thomas Auzinger said that “given a car model, there is usually one kind of mechanism that provides the functionality and, at the same time, thousands of different shapes that the car can have. Our code bridges this gap and makes it possible to reuse the mechanism across all shapes. It allows for flexibility.”

As for freedom of design, Ran Zhang, one of the researchers explains that the software ensures a good functionality, whereas artists can adjust the mechanical template to fit the design of their choice.
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