Direct shape optimization for strengthening 3D printable objects

Abstract

Recently there has been an increasing demand for software that can help designers create functional 3D objects with required
physical strength. We introduce a generic and extensible method that directly optimizes a shape subject to physical and geometric
constraints. Given an input shape, our method optimizes directly its input mesh representation until it can withstand specified
external forces, while remaining similar to the original shape. Our method performs physics simulation and shape optimization
together in a unified framework, where the physics simulator is an integral part of the optimizer. We employ geometric constraints
to preserve surface details and shape symmetry, and adapt a second-order method with analytic gradients to improve
convergence and computation time. Our method provides several advantages over previous work, including the ability to handle
general shape deformations, preservation of surface details, and incorporation of user-defined constraints. We demonstrate the
effectiveness of our method on a variety of printable 3D objects through detailed simulations as well as physical validations.

Paper

►directshapeoptimization.pdf Yahan Zhou Evangelos Kalogerakis Rui Wang Ian R. Grosse "Direct shape optimization for strengthening 3D printable objects", Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 35, No. 7, 2016 [Bibtex]

Video

 

Supplementary Material

The following document contains analytic gradients and Hessians used in our optimization.

►directshapeoptimization_supp_material.pdf

Code & Data

The following archive contains the source code and experimental data of our method. Please read the readme file in the code folder of the archive for more details.

►directshapeoptimization.zip, 8 MB

Presentation

►direct_shape_optimization_presentation.pdf, 4 MB

Acknowledgments

We thank the reviewers for their comments. This work was supported by NSF grants CHS-1422441, CHS-1617333, and IIS-1423082.