Simple software creates complex wooden joints
An interactive system to design and fabricate structurally sound wood
joints

Date:
October 21, 2020
Source:
University of Tokyo
Summary:
Wood is considered an attractive construction material for both
aesthetic and environmental purposes. Construction of useful
wood objects requires complicated structures and ways to connect
components together.

Researchers created a novel 3D design application to hugely simplify
the design process and also provide milling machine instructions
to efficiently produce the designed components. The designs do not
require nails or glue, meaning items made with this system can be
easily assembled, disassembled, reused, repaired or recycled.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Wood is considered an attractive construction material for both
aesthetic and environmental purposes. Construction of useful wood
objects requires complicated structures and ways to connect components together. Researchers created a novel 3D design application to hugely
simplify the design process and also provide milling machine instructions
to efficiently produce the designed components. The designs do not
require nails or glue, meaning items made with this system can be easily assembled, disassembled, reused, repaired or recycled.


========================================================================== Carpentry is a practice as ancient as humanity itself. Equal parts art
and engineering, it has figuratively and literally shaped the world around
us. Yet despite its ubiquity, carpentry is a difficult and time-consuming skill, leading to relatively high prices for hand-crafted wooden items
like furniture.

For this reason, much wooden furniture around us is often, at least to
some degree, made by machines. Some machines can be highly automated and programmed with designs created on computers by human designers. This
in itself can be a very technical and creative challenge, out of reach
to many, until now.

Researchers from the Department of Creative Informatics at the University
of Tokyo have created a 3D design application to create structural
wooden components quickly, easily and efficiently. They call it Tsugite,
the Japanese word for joinery, and through a simple 3D interface, users
with little or no prior experience in either woodworking or 3D design can create designs for functional wooden structures in minutes. These designs
can then instruct milling machines to carve the structural components,
which users can then piece together without the need for additional
tools or adhesives, following on- screen instructions.

"Our intention was to make the art of joinery available to people without specific experience. When we tested the interface in a user study,
people new to 3D modeling not only designed some complex structures,
but also enjoyed doing so," said researcher Maria Larsson. "Tsugite is
simple to use as it guides users through the process one step at a time, starting with a gallery of existing designs that can then be modified
for different purposes. But more advanced users can jump straight to a
manual editing mode for more freeform creativity." Tsugite gives users
a detailed view of wooden joints represented by what are known as voxels, essentially 3D pixels, in this case small cubes. These voxels can be moved around at one end of a component to be joined; this automatically adjusts
the voxels at the end of the corresponding component such that they are guaranteed to fit together tightly without the need for nails or even
glue. Two or more components can be joined and the software algorithm
will adjust all accordingly. Different colors inform the user about
properties of the joints such as how easily they will slide together,
or problems such as potential weaknesses.

Something that makes Tsugite unique is that it will factor the fabrication process directly into the designs. This means that milling machines,
which have physical limitations such as their degrees of freedom, tool
size and so on, are only given designs they are able to create. Something
that has plagued users of 3D printers, which share a common ancestry with milling machines, is that software for 3D printers cannot always be sure
how the machine itself will behave which can lead to failed prints.

"There is some great research in the field of computer graphics on how to
model a wide variety of joint geometries. But that approach often lacks
the practical considerations of manufacturing and material properties,"
said Larsson.

"Conversely, research in the fields of structural engineering and
architecture may be very thorough in this regard, but they might only be concerned with a few kinds of joints. We saw the potential to combine the strengths of these approaches to create Tsugite. It can explore a large
variety of joints and yet keeps them within realistic physical limits."
Another advantage of incorporating fabrication limitations into the
design process is that Tsugite's underlying algorithms have an easier
time navigating all the different possibilities they could present to
users, as those that are physically impossible are simply not given as
options. The researchers hope through further refinements and advancements
that Tsugite can be scaled up to design not just furniture and small structures, but also entire buildings.

"According to the U.N., the building and construction industry is
responsible for almost 40% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. Wood
is perhaps the only natural and renewable building material that we
have, and efficient joinery can add further sustainability benefits,"
said Larsson. "When connecting timbers with joinery, as opposed to
metal fixings, for example, it reduces mixing materials. This is good
for sorting and recycling. Also, unglued joints can be taken apart
without destroying building components. This opens up the possibility
for buildings to be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere. Or for
defective parts to be replaced. This flexibility of reuse and repair
adds sustainability benefits to wood." This research is supported by
JST ACT-I grant number JPMJPR17UT, JSPS KAKENHI grant number 17H00752,
and JST CREST grant number JPMJCR17A1, Japan.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Tokyo. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Maria Larsson, Hironori Yoshida, Nobuyuki Umetani, Takeo Igarashi.

Tsugite: Interactive Design and Fabrication of Wood
Joints. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User
Interface Software and Technology, 2020 DOI: 10.1145/3379337.3415899 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201021112402.htm

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