ShapeForge · ShapeForge: By-Example Synthesis for Fabrication

Despite the advances in fabrication technologies such as 3D printing, we still lack the software allowing for anyone to easily manipulate and create useful objects. Not many people possess the required skills and time to create elegant designs that conform to precise technical specifications.'By--example' shape synthesis methods are promising to address this problem: New shapes are automatically synthesized by assembling parts cutout of examples. The underlying assumption is that if parts are stitched along similar areas, the result will be similar in terms of its low--level representation: Any small spatial neighborhood in the output matches a neighborhood in the input. However, these approaches offer little control over the global organization of the synthesized shapes, which is randomized.The ShapeForge challenge is to automatically produce new objects visually similar to a set of examples, while ensuring that the generated objects can enforce a specific purpose, such as supporting weight distributed in space, affording for seating space or allowing for light to go through. This properties are crucial for someone designing furniture, lamps, containers, stairs and many of the common objects surrounding us. The originality of my approach is to cast a new view on the problem of 'by--example' shape synthesis, formulating it as the joint optimization of 'by--example' objectives, semantic descriptions of the content, as well as structural and fabrication objectives. Throughout the project, we will consider the full creation pipeline, from modeling to the actual fabrication of objects on a 3D printer. We will test our results on printed parts, verifying that they can be fabricated and exhibit the requested structural properties in terms of stability and resistance.