Furniture Factory

(sketching, Computational Construction Kits and Craft)

The Furniture Factory is a working prototype program built to explore how to help designers construct physical prototypes using rapid prototyping and manufacturing machines. Furniture Factory provides a sketch-based design interface that a designer can use to draw furniture in 3D. The design is then displayed in an isometric viewing window where the designer can view it and edit it. The program then decomposes the 3D model into flat panels that are displayed in the parts window. The Furniture Factory adds joints where one panel connects to another according to connection conditions. These added joints enable designers to construct the physical model easily and quickly. The program then generates HPGL code to cut the furniture parts on a laser cutter. Designers construct their furniture by assembling the cut parts.

The Furniture Factory is related to Thinking with Your Hands Project.

web page: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/yoh1/fur-fac.html

researchers: Yeonjoo Oh, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do

sponsor: the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance (PITA)
the National Science Foundation under Grant ITR-0326054

last updated 9.1.2008 by Yeonjoo Oh