The course
The object of this course was to design/develop shape and pattern based ornaments in conjunction with rapid prototyping (3D printing and milling).
This wiki page contains the resulting scripts/plugins which I wrote as well as the presentations (*.ppt) format. Unfortunately there is no record of the presentation itself.
The plugins and scripts on this page are provided as-is without any guarantee. These were written to accomplish a specific task in a small amount of time and I did not put too much time into erro trapping and UI.
Shape
The shape part of the exercise was aimed at desiging a column fit for 3D printing. I decided to try to mimic the root structure of a tree (upside down) which maximized internal intersections (for stability and structural integrity) while minimizing sharp bends (for torque forces). Interestingly, my initial approach which set out to duplicate a natural root structure did not perform well and I had to create another, far more abstract branching algorithm.
The shape project presentation (Powerpoint format 2+ MB)
The scripts used in the column project
Pattern
The pattern part of the exercise was aimed at desiging a 60*40 cm tile fit for 3-axis milling. I wanted to impose two conflicting patterns on the same tile, each of which would be dominant from a different distance.
The tile project presentation (Powerpoint format 3+ MB)
The scripts and plugins used in the tile project