Disney Research Hub presents an interactive tool for designing physical surfaces made from flexible interlocking quadrilateral elements of a single size and shape. With the element shape fixed, the design task becomes one of finding a discrete structure—i.e., element connectivity and binary orientations—that leads to a desired geometry. In order to address this challenging problem of combinatorial geometry, they propose a forward modeling tool that allows the user to interactively explore the space of feasible designs. Paralleling principles from conventional modeling software, their approach leverages a library of base shapes that can be instantiated, combined, and extended using two fundamental operations: merging and extrusion. In order to assist the user in building the designs, Disney furthermore propose a method to automatically generate assembly instructions. They demonstrate the versatility of our method by creating a diverse set of digital and physical examples that can serve as personalized lamps or decorative items.
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