Shape Structuralizing for Design and More

Liked this, especially as it could be connected to supply chains,  procurement, compliance ....

Smart software tool could pave the way for changing how things get designed, made, and supplied      Purdue.edu

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — If you don’t like wandering through big-box stores trying to find the furniture you need, and then struggle to assemble it, researchers have proposed a solution: Smart software that helps you design your own furniture, 3D print the joints and assemble the whole structure at home.

“This work has implications for changing how the supply chain works,” said Karthik Ramani, Purdue University’s Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “A tool like this turns consumers into producers.”

The researchers presented the tool, called “Shape Structuralizer,” at the 2019 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Glasgow, Scotland on Monday (May 6).

There’s one problem: The industries for such a tool – a way to pick up parts to 3D print your designs or have the parts shipped to you – don’t exist yet. ....

A YouTube video of the tool is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1dSmxgI7wA&feature=youtu.be.  ... 

“We don’t know yet what form the ideas we have demonstrated will take when they’re available to consumers. But we’ve demonstrated one way that a tool can adapt to the user rather than the other way around,” Ramani said. “This would localize manufacturing and cut tedious steps between design and fabrication.”

Shape Structuralizer is a step toward creating these industries by making structure design “open-source,” similarly to how Apple provides a platform for anyone to make apps, or how Tesla made its patents on electric car technology freely available to the public.  ... "