CS 285: SOLID MODELING, Spring 2000

CS 285 Course Goals for Spring 2000

Solid Modeling and Fabrication
for Industrial, Commercial, and Artistic Applications

---- e.g., with a giant B-Spline patch with dozens of freely movable control points.

But caD (computer-aided DESIGN) of solids that can be fabricated and that are worth being fabricated.

==> Designing with serious functional and/or aesthetic constraints.

==> Leading to "usable" or enjoyable physical parts.

• A#1: "Design Examples"
  • Understanding the design process;
  • and its decomposition into individual steps.
  
  
• A#2: "Mugs and Teapots"
  • Phase 1: - Some loose functional and aestetic constraints.
  • Phase 2: - A description that can be "understood" by QuickSlice.
  
  
• A#3: "Escher Spheres"
  • Phase 1: - Strict symmetry constraints: 120-fold icosahedral group.
  • Phase 2: - Water-tight representation; show tile boundaries in bas-relief.
  
  
• A#4: "Gear Wheels"
  • Phase 1: - Understanding gear wheels and their interaction; - Creating a parameterized generator that captures this understanding.
  • Phase 2: - Extending the generator to making bevel gears; - Applying that generator to making a coupled gear cluster.
  
  
• A#5: "Snap-together Tiles"
  • Phase 1: - Design parts that form a modular set; - and which interact extremely tightly. - How to "sell" your design ideas.
  • Phase 2: - Introduce materials properties (ABS plastic from an FDM machine). - Consider requirements of injection mold making. - Make Boolean operations work in the QuickSlice environment.
  
  
• A#6: "Recursive Torus"
  • The creative aspects of the conceptual design process.
  • Tough test cases to give the Boolean pipeline a workout.
  
  
• The Project:
  • Putting several of the above elements together.