An integrated design tool for timber plate structures to generate joints geometry, fabrication toolpath, and robot trajectories

This paper presents an integrated design tool for structures composed of engineered timber panels that are connected by traditional wood joints. Recent advances in computational architecture have permitted to automate the fabrication and assembly such using Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines industrial robotic arms. While several large-scale demonstrators been realized, most developed algorithms closed-source or project-oriented. The lack a general framework makes it difficult architects, engineers designers effectively manipulate this innovative construction system. Therefore, research aims at developing holistic targeting wide range architectural applications. Main achievements include: (1) new data structure deal with modular assemblies, (2) analytical parametrization geometry five joints, (3) method generate CNC toolpath while integrating constraints, (4) automatically compute robot trajectories given stack plates.